Stiletto 2 : The Disinherited - Softcover

Leary, Timothy; Ray, Judy; Annis, Michael; Bergt, Michael; Ashley, David; Tavel, Ronald; Jaffe, Dan; DeCLue-Kawashinsay, Charlotte; DeCormier-Shekerjian, Regina; Wolfe, Bruce David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 188286302X ISBN 13: 9781882863020

Publisher: Howling Dog Pr, 1992

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

The following paragraphs are taken from a point midway in "Brave New World Order" by Michael Annis, an essay which won the 1994 Co-Visions [State of Colorado] Prize in Literature. This essay appears in Stiletto 2: The Disinherited.

Like B-movie bombers came the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, the War on Homelessness, the War on Sex and Violence, The War on EVIL, the War on War ... the next Brave New Movement ... champagne toasts of Das Kapital sparkle upon streets paved with god ... aborted fetuses are our business -- our only business ... benefactors piss in the mouths of the hopelessly human dying of thirst ... Auschwitch fairyland, bombed out ghettoes of the Terran nightmare ...

Unwitting stooges, goons, hitmen in the name of Gold and country, in the name of the "higher good" ... switching the channel did not dam up the bloods on the block ... whirlpools of mistrust churning within rivers of routine lies and propaganda ... overflowing scenarios of fear and dependency ... random violence flash floods the landscape ... Mein Kampf on trading cards, pink bubbles bursting onward and outward ... roly-poly bug militias hamming it up for the cameras ... dodderers dotarding around the plastic pineneedle forests of Target and Wal-Mart, making New Years resolutions for the next Waco, the next Okie City ... paintballs hurtling through the bars smoting trash talk and beer bellies hoping ... sporadic aggression, gestapo raids, assassinations, coups, reincarnated inquisitions ... ontological horror, internal vacancy, great chaotic vortices consuming them from the inside-out, rotting and poisoning them, as the airwaves bled with upbeat nonsense to bury the national memory ... the skeletal cell, membrane without brain, viciously apprehended scapegoats, kissed the hands of corporate gangstas ... threw sand in the eyes of the national dignity ... peanut gallery protests of atrocities, as decisive and empowered as monkey farts ... scribbling profound lines of socially conscious poetry lamenting bungs in the fenders of Audis and Chevys ... canned laughter and tears ricocheting around a pinball universe of 2-dimensional realization embellished with buzzers, bells, and UFOs ...

The following two poems are taken from "Ever-Expanding Wilderness" by Antler, a section of poetry which appears in Stiletto 2: The Disinherited.

SMUGGLING THE DUST OF IMMORTALS

Flying back from Europe to Milwaukee
looking down at the Pyrenees
where the antler'd dancer
dances on the ceiling of a cave,
Seeing the Atlantic spread before me,
thinking back to Rome,
to my visit to the Protestant Cemetery,
my afternoon alone there
with the graves of Shelley and Keats,
Speaking poems by them by heart
to their final resting place,
and taking a pinch of soil
from each grave
in a plastic bag,
Little suspecting when I landed in New York
the customs inspector would find it,
open it, sniff the contents,
eye me suspiciously: "What's this?"
"Gravesoil from Keats' and Shelley's graves."
"Who are they?"

ATHEIST CONCHES

Are there conches that don't believe
after they die they echo the sea?
That go to great lengths to prove to other conches
the foolishness of believing after they die
they will echo the sea.
Spend their whole lives writing books
about how there is no air or beach,
only the sea,
and when you die that's it,
there's no echo.

Review:

Stiletto combines poetry, prose, art, calligraphy, typography and graphic design in an unexpected and striking manner. The concept is unique, the execution painstaking. High praise from coast to coast. -- The Rocky Mountain News, Denver

Stiletto is a monument to the spirit. Letter X-ers and Strong Coffee Cats, Stiletto is a blade up the ass of corporately co-opted culture which has sucked the life and vitality out of the American art experience. Spectacularly designed layouts, stunning visuals, this "Iliad" dismembers worldwide corporate control. Hope, fear, dislocation and renewal interchange-at times visceral-battling for your heart and mind. -- The Lumpen Times, Chicago, alternative newspaper

Stiletto sets a standard for extravagant design, tough writing and graphic amplification. A Rolls-Royce production, the scope has no precedent. Stiletto transcends conventional rules. Most striking is the dense, organic sense of the text and pictorial work, as if they grew together like grapevines and trelllis. Its own universe, the entire collection makes a political statement succeeding on many levels. Stiletto 2: The Disinherited is an orgasm of images and embodies that same fire. -- Denise Low, The Alternative Index

Beautiful full-color on chrome-foil covers, extraordinarily printed, striking, visually elaborate, containing fold-out broadsides suitable for hanging, Stiletto is a gorgeous book, a dense, dense book-multi-themes laced together by spiritual and artistic glue, exhibiting quite a range of styles and literary forms. The writing is absolutely uncompromising. Defines the perceptions by which an artist is forced to live and endure. Libertarian, focused, intense, brooding subtleties and social themes -- Chaos giving brith to itself across the face of the land -- work we associate with profound social change. -- KCRW-FM, Los Angeles, Michael Silverblatt, The Bookworm Show

About this edition

• Publisher: Howling Dog Pr
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 188286302X
• ISBN 13: 9781882863020
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 300
• Illustrator: Heyen William, Goldbarth Albert, Wakoski Diane