Twilight of the Dictators (Paperback)

TWO POETS DELIBERATE ON THE RISE AND FALL,

AND RISE AGAIN, OF TYRANTS AND DICTATORS…

TWILIGHT OF THE DICTATORS, first published in 1992, gathered together poems written by Rutherford and Vanderbeck (unknown to one another) from the late 1960s through the fall of the Berlin Wall. Both poets felt a deep kinship with their fellow artists behind the Iron Curtain and had written about the

invasion of Czechoslovakia; the Stalin terror and its effects on artists like Shostakovich; the dreariness and paranoia of life in East Germany; and the jubilance both poets felt as Communism collapsed upon itself in 1989. The book’s shamelessly libertarian tone made it the most shunned book ever published by The Poet’s Press. Events since then have prompted the poets to add more poems about bad behavior, East and West. As Rutherford writes in the afterword to the book: “This book was not ‘politically correct’ when it was published in 1992 ... This new edition, published in the wake of the Balkan wars, 9/11, and the ascent

of American fascism under Cheney and Bush, is again ‘politically incorrect.’ Our newer poems take on the Taliban, Serbian incendiary bombing of Bosnian libraries, and the Cheney/Bush war machine. It was also an opportunity to reflect on ourselves as the Atom Bomb generation, and to debate whether, with global warming, we have finally reached a crisis that we cannot fix. In balance, this longer book is an equal opportunity offender of orthodoxy.”

This is the 180th publication of The Poet’s Press. Expanded edition, 2011. 136 pages, oversize paperback 8.5 x 11 inches, ISBN 978-0922558391.