Protocols — Rebecca Leffell Koren

Rebecca Leffell Koren

Work

PROTOCOLS

(6.75×8.625 in, 152pp)

Daniela Naomi Molnar’s Protocols: An Erasure is a book-length erasure poem that redacts the antisemitic document The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Drawing light from darkness, Molnar’s work is a meticulous, questioning, sensitive, and searing act that mines meaning and depth from a document so flat, fictitious, and dangerous. Inhabiting a structure of ennumerated “Protocols,” the poem beats rhythmically across the page, punctuating the surgically intentional erasure inherent to the poet’s process. Meaning is palpable in the spaces that surround the words and lines that wind through the book’s pages.

The design integrates hints of typographic reference to the original text, as well as motifs that Molnar draws out—of power, asterisms, annotation and circulation. The cover and interstitial sequences are designed, in method and visual tone, in reference to the carbon copy—calling to the widespread distribution and translation of the original antisemitic text, as its message continues to be repurposed and reconfigured to disseminate an age-old hate. Handwritten marks denote evidence of the individualized attention and active reading in copies that remain accessible to the public through libraries and online archives.

Protocols: An Erasure is available for purchase through Ayin Press.
Book cover photography by Meghan Kirkwood.