Argento Series - Kevin Killian

Argento Series by Kevin Killian / ISBN 9781739364922 / 104-page paperback, 5.75 x 8.26 inches, published in 2023 by Pilot Press *** Reprinted for the first time in over twenty years, Kevin Killian’s first book of poetry is an audacious, operatic dive into the darkest recesses of the AIDS crisis. In 1991, Killian reported he was “frozen, unable to think of a way to write about AIDS crisis”. A year later, his friend Kathy Acker suggested the “films of Dario Argento as a prism through which to take apart horror of living and dying in AIDS era”. The result is Argento Series [first published in 2001 by Krupskaya] framing Killian’s real-life experience of losing his friends and lovers to the disease through the camera lens of Italian horror filmmaker, Dario Argento. Here, AIDS is cast as the horror film monster, wreaking cold, unfeeling chaos and destruction wherever it finds itself. Blending a chilling, impersonal observation of death with Killian's typical high camp, tenderness and O'Hara-