Protocols

An urgent, poetic exploration of power, memory, belief, and the dangers and possibilities of language. PROTOCOLS: An Erasure transforms the world’s 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 breathes space and light into a text dense with hatred. She patiently uncovers the 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 poet’s 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.