Twilight of the Dictators: Poems of Tyranny and Liberation

by Brett Rutherford, Pieter Vanderbeck (Illustrator)

Unknown to one another until the mid-1980s, poets Brett Rutherford and Pieter Vanderbeck had each been writing intense narrative and satirical poems about Russia and Eastern Europe for many years. The first edition of this book came out in 1992, with both the horrors of totalitarian regimes, and the jubilation of liberation, expressed in its pages. Tracing terror and resistance in Russia, Romania, East Germany through the lens of the persecuted artist -- such as a nameless writer in Rumania pursued and beaten by thugs, or Shostakovich's years of midnight watches for the men in black he expected to take him to the Gulag -- this book is a monument to the spirit that resists. Now, in the 21st century, the poets return with a second edition, capturing the ghastly ironies of this new era, and they do not spare local tyrants-in-training as they turn their attention to Buddha-dynamiting holy men and the American military-industrial juggernaut that never saw a country it didn't want to trample. A handful of other poignant poems reflect on "Growing Up With Mushroom Clouds. This is a somber book, graced with biting satire and narrative two deeply humanist poets grappling with the inhumanity of power. Highlights include "Stalin and Shostakovich;" a fantasy about animated pianos driving Russians from Poland; an elegy for Czech martyr Jan Palach; celebrations of the destruction and melting of Lenin and Stalin statues; and the flight of Romania's dictator, "The Genius of the Carpathians." Illustrated with line drawings by Pieter Vanderbeck.

136 pages, Paperback

Published October 10, 2011