The "One Word" series explores the how the gestalt of reading changes when there is only one word printed on each page. Different demands are made upon the viewer as the intended speed becomes slower and the act becomes more physical. Although the viewer can savor every word, different cognitive processes are in play that prematurely subjugate the sentence and the paragraph to memory. Although readers normally reads a text in phrases and sentences, the writer writes it one word at a time. It is seldom that people take the time to experience a work as the author conceived it; contemplating each word and carefully thinking it through. For the author it is both a secrete act as well as an aesthetic one. This text is laid out with one word on each page in order to provide the reader with the opportunity to contemplate the work a new.

The Da Vinci Poems, the second book of poetry produced by artist and writer Anthony (Tony) Crisafulli, is inspired by the classic Italian fables that can be found scribed throughout Da Vinci's famous notebooks. had been doing research on Da Vinci's Last Supper when I came across some fables in his notebooks. They were delightful but surprisingly dark parables that seemed to speak directly to the Renaissance as well as to the present time. They were truly amazing and showed a dimension of Da Vinci that I had never known before. So when I finished writing my last book, I decided to do something with them; firstly because they captivated me and secondly because my children so enjoyed them. My first attempt at translating Da Vinci's stories was an utter failure. This was not because my translation was bad or the stories uninteresting in English, but rather they textually lacked the flow and surprise that Italian is so adept at communicating. Over the next few weeks, I lived with the texts that would not seem to let me be. One day, without thinking, I began to see them in verse. Instantly, I was pleased. Shortly after, I shared some of the poems with my publisher and he encouraged me to continue on and turn the collection into a book. A writer always has at least one audience in mind when creating a work for the public eye. I had two. The first audience was children. Not typical children, but the sort that find pleasure in reading deeper into a story -- those who seek to discover the hidden references and the second meaning that peaks out from behind the curtain of symbols and solitude. The other audience was my colleagues who are artists and poets. This is my gift to them for all the inspiration their work and friendship has provided me.

Residing in northwestern New Jersey, Jim Toia has developed a symbiotic relationship with the flora and fauna that graces his landscape. The lush hills and woodlands, bisected by rivers and streams, emphasize the elementary rhythms of growth and decay. The inherent fecundity of these surroundings is his constant reminder of the cycles of nature, an ever-present affirmation of the cruel and splendid impartiality of life and death. His work, a direct response to observation, forces us to step closer in order that we may see. His polemic approach is directly in conflict with our traditional impulse to step back. Instead, Toia chooses to stick our nose in his "captures" in order to unveil nature's agency. His spiderweb drawings, natural masterpieces of architecture, acknowledge both strength and fragility. Their structures are a magnificent array of forms, punctuated by a sobering reminder that their real purpose is that of a death trap. The spore drawings address other notions of universality in their simultaneous implication of the micro and the macro (from quantum to the cosmological). His ant colony casts, gem-like examples of repetitive patterns, denote everything from river systems and Bonsai trees, to optic nerves and Purkinje cells in our retina and brain. Toia's "captures" speak to the larger notion of our perceived relationship with our natural world. Despite our best efforts to control our environment, we are deeply connected and bound to nature's ontology, both intellectually and aesthetically. It is this physiological bond that supersedes culture itself.