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.