Protocols

An urgent, poetic exploration of power, memory, belief, and the dangers and possibilities of language. PROTOCOLS: An Erasure transforms the worlds most influential antisemitic document, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, into an erasure poem exploring essential questions of power, history, and language. By redacting words from the original document, Molnar created a book-length poem that reinstates space and possibility where malevolent words once were crammed, excavating the big questions buried within the source text: What is the true nature of power, and how is it tied to a fear of the unknown? How can language, weaponized and eroded, also be a tool for healing? And how can silence help us reckon with history and shape the future? Accompanying the poem, a lyric essay excavates the poets deep personal connection to the source text, weaving personal and collective history by traversing former concentration camps, immigrant communities in New York City, and remote desert wildernesses, and posing new possibilities for a less deterministic, more spacious and peaceful world.