Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The War on Books
The war on books, codified by Stalin’s functionaries
at the Soviet Writers’ Conference in 1934 and ruthlessly
waged by the secret police for the following fifty years,
was finally coming to an end, and Zhivago’s insurgent
guerrillas were winning.
-Duncan White, Cold Warriors:
Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold war
What books will America purge this week -
What childhood adventures, what scholarly works
What entertainments of an idle hour
Will be forbidden to us in this Land of the Free?
We pray that nations blessed with liberty
Will smuggle books to us, stories and poems
With innocent ideas that give delight
And in their innocence threaten tyrants
What books will America purge this week –
And when did we become afraid of ideas?
Mar 29, 2021
Mar 29, 2021 at 9:16 AM UTC
Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The War on Books
The war on books, codified by Stalin’s functionaries
at the Soviet Writers’ Conference in 1934 and ruthlessly
waged by the secret police for the following fifty years,
was finally coming to an end, and Zhivago’s insurgent
guerrillas were winning.
-Duncan White, Cold Warriors:
Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold war
What books will America purge this week -
What childhood adventures, what scholarly works
What entertainments of an idle hour
Will be forbidden to us in this Land of the Free?
We pray that nations blessed with liberty
Will smuggle books to us, stories and poems
With innocent ideas that give delight
And in their innocence threaten tyrants
What books will America purge this week –
And when did we become afraid of ideas?
A poem is itself.