Trees Became Torches
Selected Poems
"Rolfe's voice is one that many of us feared was buried forever. . . . He stands in the forefront of an entire 'lost generation' of left-wing writers who fused artistic craft with irrepressible political commitment." -- Alan Wald, author of The Responsibility of Intellectuals: Selected Essays on Marxist Traditions in Cultural Commitment
"[Rolfe's] Spanish Civil War poems may be the best written by an American writer, and his McCarthy era poems brilliantly counteract the often apolitical, rather socially aseptic poetry of their time." -- Reginald Gibbons, editor of TriQuarterly
The radical journalist and poet Edwin Rolfe wrote eloquently of the hardships of the Great Depression, the experience of war, and McCarthy era witch-hunts. More than fifty of his best poems--some beautifully lyrical and some devastatingly satiric--are included in Trees Became Torches. Rolfe was widely known as the poet laureate of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, the Americans who volunteered to help defend the elected Spanish government during the 1936-39 civil war.
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