.

Willy Wonky

on the revision of Roald Dahl’s works 

The whacky wokester clowns employed at Puffin
Are wrecking classics with exciting stuff in.
They’re ditching all the derring-do and dark
(The spunk and spark and funk and quirk and snark)
For noggin-numbing, glum and humdrum dross
That doesn’t make despotic critics cross.
They’re swapping all that’s riveting and peachy
For joyless crap that’s sappy, flat and preachy:
Chocolate factories free from nuts and dairy,
Aunties that aren’t spongy-spiky scary,
Oompa Loompas tolerant and tall,
No one ugly, beastly, fat or small.
Next will be the toxic Harry Potter—
That white, wand-wielding, patriarchal rotter.

.

.

Susan Jarvis Bryant has poetry published on Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, Light, Sparks of Calliope, and Expansive Poetry Online. She also has poetry published in TRINACRIA, Beth Houston’s Extreme Formal Poems anthology, and in Openings (anthologies of poems by Open University Poets in the UK). Susan is the winner of the 2020 International SCP Poetry Competition, and has been nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize.


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65 Responses

  1. Brian A Yapko

    Susan, this blast of a poem with all of those Willy-Wonka-like bells and whistles is a riot! I love it — especially that hilarious closing couplet! And I’m very, very glad that you’re bringing this extremely important issue to light. I myself would like to start a riot over the idea of publishers posthumously revising the work of novelists and poets. This is one of the most dangerous things I can imagine. It’s a woke invitation to rewrite history and any text that these insane and inane people dislike. Nothing is safe. The idea that someone can go back and change my poetry or prose stories after I’m dead to suit their ideologies really upsets me. It’s wrong in any context. It starts with changing the words “fat” or “black” in Willy Wonka. It proceeds with removing “offensive” words from everything from Mein Kampf to Gone with the Wind to The Good Earth, the collected works of Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling… The potential for offensive content in literature is limitless. The new translation of the Danish Bible has eliminated the word/name “Israel” from the entire Bible because the very name “Israel” is upsetting to tender-hearted antisemites there. Where does it end? Change the printed word unilaterally and you destroy all social, cultural, literary, historical frames of reference. Perhaps that’s actually the end-game here. We must not let that happen.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Brian, thank you very much for your observations. Poetic bells and whistles are wonderful for drawing attention to the atrocities occurring with ever-increasing regularity in today’s society. The truth is being erased before our very eyes and in this age of modern technology, it’s getting ever easier to do it. The iron fist crushing our past is doing so in order to repeat the past… a past of dictators who crushed all those who challenged them with the truth. Eradicating the truth means lies will prevail, and as the past shows, nothing good will come of it. You are right. We must not let this happen.

      Reply
    • Priscilla King

      The idea of removing offensive elements from “Mein Kampf” makes the mind squirble. Young Adolf sees the seedy old man and thinks “There but for the grace of God go I”? In that version, how does he get elected, and why does the US object to a lovable foreign dictator? Urgh *ick*.

      Reply
      • Susan Jarvis Bryant

        Priscilla, exactly! With history erased, the benefit of hindsight goes with it, and the repetition of past mistakes will know no bounds… although, I must say the Western world is heading for disaster while history is still fresh in our minds! This does indeed make the mind squirble… mine is squirbling up a storm! Thank you very much for your comment.

  2. Joseph S. Salemi

    At least poor Roald Dahl is dead, and doesn’t have to see this defacement of his work.

    Changing scriptural text to suit one’s predilections is not a new thing. The early Protestants omitted certain texts in St. Jerome’s Vulgate which they considered “not genuine” (i.e. theologically inconvenient), and the New England Unitarians tossed out whole passages that they felt did not fit in with their peculiar prejudices. The Danes are just the latest manifestation of this idiocy.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Joe, I agree. Thank goodness Roald Dahl is not here to see this. Isn’t it odd that we’re living in a world where sexualizing and castrating minors is fine, but to offend them with an adjective or a misplaced pronoun is the cruelest possible curse a child could face?

      As for scriptural text, I believe it’s being skewed in many a pulpit today. I worked for a church that unashamedly “modified” the words of the Bible on a regular basis. The “modified” passages bore no resemblance to the original. To my mind this was mutilation of language which is healed only by reading the original words oneself. I think the big problem we have today is listening to too many opinions without doing the research ourselves… when one starts to sift through history, all becomes clear. Future generations will only gain access to the truth if we preserve it. The onus is on us to speak the truth… no matter how tough it gets. We owe it to future generations.

      Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      I’ll graciously take that as a compliment. Thank you very much, Paul.

      Reply
  3. Russel Winick

    The original works will always be with us, and now we have a marvelous Susanism to set the matter straight.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      I would love to share your optimism, Russel, but I have a horrible feeling we’re getting very close to Ray Bradbury’s vision in Fahrenheit 451… I can smell the smoke. I will do all I can with those Susanisms, and hopefully they’ll go some way towards putting out that fire. Thank you very much for your continued encouragement and support!

      Reply
  4. Joshua C. Frank

    Wow, Susan, I wish I had your talent with words! You’ve really pulled out all the stops with this one, with all the alliterations and internal rhyme, plus the humor. The couplet sonnet form is a nice touch as well.

    As for the subject matter, we just knew it had to come to this. That’s one reason I go for public domain books—they can be downloaded for free in many file formats, so even if someone published a bowdlerized version (which I’ve seen done with some of the children’s classics), the originals would still be easy to find. Of course, it’ll only be a matter of time before these too are hunted down, so I’ll want to buy print copies…

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Josh, I thoroughly appreciate your support of my poetry and (likewise) I appreciate your courageous creations – admirably crafted, thought-provoking poems that are making a difference.

      I had a huge book collection in England. I decided to donate it, and to only bring my favorite poetry books. They filled one wall of bookshelves. I now have two walls of bookshelves and its growing… I am collecting old dictionaries and old editions of books I love… not just poetry… all because I know that Roald Dahl is going to be one of many victims of this insanity.

      Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Joshua, you’d better hurry. The price of original unbowdlerized copies of Dahl’s books have now skyrocketed on eBay and other on-line book sellers. One copy was listed today at $7000.

      What I don’t understand is why the publishers who hold the copyright for Dahl’s work allowed a small group of self-appointed fanatics to dictate this act of censorship, which is going to cost the publishers a huge amount of money in new printing and lost sales. Are they that gutless? Why didn’t they just tell these little schmucks to bugger off?

      Reply
      • Susan Jarvis Bryant

        Joe, I echo your sentiments… why on earth didn’t they scream “Bugger off!!” from the rafters… was it money, idiocy, or delusion?! I’m beyond caring. I’m done with the questions and the stupid answers. I will put it down the condition of mankind… yes “mankind” in its original sense… I’m relying on the old books not the new rewritten ones.

      • Joshua C. Frank

        There have been public domain books that were bowdlerized, but because they’re public domain, unbowdlerized versions are easily found online.

        https://www.gutenberg.org/
        https://librivox.org/
        https://archive.org/

        Even woke Amazon has unbowdlerized copies of these, even ones with content that would be deemed racist today. And they’re free!

        There’s someone who put together a nice collection of links to public domain books for homeschooling parents:

        https://oldfashionededucation.com/

        I’ve found all these really helpful in my self-education in the humanities.

    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      ‘Sensitivity readers’ indeed! And just how is ‘sensitivity’ measured? I suppose it’s on the same scale that Klaus Schwab measures ‘happiness’ – “You will own nothing and be happy” – while he owns everything and is delirious with joy!

      Dave, thank you for your appreciation of my poem and your great observation… ‘the madness of the mad’ is where it’s at, and sadly, we’re dealing with the resulting horrors on a daily basis.

      Reply
  5. James Sale

    Great work Susan, especially love the last line and Harry Potter being a ‘rotter’ – ironic, of course, in that the actor who played him in the films has proved such a ‘woke’ advocator! This matter, of course, concerns us all – it really is the thin end of a dangerous wedge. CS Lewis recommended that we assiduously read lots of ‘old books’ as an antidote to contemporary thinking, thinking blind to its own blind-spots. Hopefully, there will simply be too many of them for the woke-brigade to excise and kill.

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      James, thanks so much for that bit of CS Lewis greatness.

      We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, “But how could they have thought that?”—lies where we have never suspected it…
      The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes…. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them. – C. S. Lewis

      I could have copied/pasted Lewis’s entire introduction to Athanasius’ On the Incarnation because of the many gems, but it would have taken too much space. I found it in this article:

      https://reasonabletheology.org/cs-lewis-on-reading-old-books/

      Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      James, thank you so much for this – as Mike has pointed out, it led us to do a bit of reading up on C.S. Lewis’s views on old books… he is so right. And, as for Daniel RaTcliffe ripping off the hand that fed him, chewing it up and spitting it out… he is definitely the spawn of Voldemort. 😉

      Reply
  6. Mike Bryant

    Susan, I can hardly believe that this small masterpiece was whipped up in about an hour. I love it. I know you are a fan of the classics because you’ve taken all the alliteration, consonance, assonance, metaphor, internal/end rhymes, and satire of the ages and condensed them into a super-rich bite-size snack.
    Your poems are jam-packed with poetic device, truth and beauty. Some dozen years ago, Munia Khan coined a term to describe your ebullient poetry… she said it is “Jarvisian.”
    Could you be at the forefront of a new wave of rich, joyful poetry?

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Mike, I am humbled. What I will say, is that without your encouragement, I wouldn’t be here at the SCP… a site that believes in freedom of speech. I believe poetry is the perfect vehicle for making a brief point with the maximum artistic impact… my words have pleased many and pissed off a few… at least they are hearing what I have to say, I’m happy with that.

      Reply
  7. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Good grief! I cannot accept such revisionism. This is becoming like the old Soviet state! Thank you for bringing my attention to Puffin that is left and nothin”!

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Roy, you are so right. I think this move has dealt Puffin (a revered publishing company in the UK) a severe blow. “Go woke, go broke” speaks volumes, and I have a feeling Puffin has nothin’ to offer in the way of excuses… they are guilty of slaughtering their literary cash cows and they deserve nothing less than bankruptcy.

      Reply
  8. Mark Stellinga

    Hi Susan – What a riot, great piece. There can be such wisdom in silliness. What we’re continually dealing with here is – ‘minority rules’! For my wife and I, both lifetime Midwesterners, these insane ‘purification’ efforts are particularly heart breaking and too often unanticipated. Luckily, we dodge the brunt of this madness thanks to the heavy concentration of conservatism we enjoy in our state. So sad. Keep ’em comin’.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Mark, we need to keep the truth out there… no publisher should allow the ruination of an author’s publications… and if they do, there should be consequences. It starts with calling them out. The Truth matters.

      Reply
  9. Sally Cook

    Susan, I have lived just long enough to see the destruction of contemporary art.
    Where is the excitement – the anger – students were expected to show about our works? Gone, at the behest of smug people who clamor to be the ones to virtue-signal the loudest? ineptitude has always worked against genius. It never makes their work better; it just makes them feel better..
    Nobody THINKS anymore It is no longer necessary. Just wallow in your own emotions.
    A new Nazism is upon us.
    God is the essence of creativity. See how it all ties together?
    Thanks Susan, for pointing this out in your excellent poem.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Sally, you have once again gone to the very heart of the matter. A noisy minority of self-appointed elitist rulers DON’T WANT US TO THINK. They want us merely to react to emotional stimuli that they control.

      And yes — a new Nazism is upon us. The Nazis even had a word for all of this. It was Gleichschaltung, or “co-ordination.” It meant the utter and total reorientation of every single human activity into complete subservience to Nazi ideology. The smallest thing in Germany — a botanical society, a chess club, a sports association, a ladies sewing circle — had to be consciously and thoroughly Nazified, even if it had no political aspect at all.

      That’s what’s happening now here in the United States, and on a wide scale throughout the western world. The globalist-pervert-trannie dictatorship wants EVERYTHING to be under its influence and control. Today it’s called being “WOKE.”

      The parallels are frightening. The Nazis had another word: Ausschaltung. This means “switching off,” or “shutting down,” or “removal.” It referred to how you were expected to deal with any kind of openly expressed criticism or opposition to Nazi ideas — you were to silence it by ignoring it or suppressing it, or by loudly accusing those who dared to express such unorthodox views so that they would be shunned, or fired from their jobs.

      Guess what we call that today — CANCEL CULTURE.

      It’s amazing that left-liberals simply are blind to the tyrannical shit that is being imposed on us, and how it perfectly matches what the Nazis did during the Third Reich. Can liberals really be that stupid and unperceptive? (ANSWER: Yeah, they sure can.)

      Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Dearest Sally, there are so many words of wisdom in your comment, I will return to it on a regular basis. You have seen so many changes in your life and your words hold great weight. It seems ignorance is now working against wisdom, and too many gullible people are listening to idiocy and worshipping it as if it were the answer to to every problem under the sun… classic literature matters. It sets one’s soul on the path to freedom simply because it paints a picture of a world we can learn from. A new Nazism really is upon us… it’s just that most people cannot or will not see it. Thank you, for your spot on observations. Your voice is a warning to all.

      Reply
  10. Norma Pain

    What a wonderful romp. This short and clever poem is perfect in its message. Thank you Susan.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Norma, thank you very much. I know you know that humor can help us point out the gravest of deeds… that’s why I value your words.

      Reply
  11. Cheryl Corey

    I’m so glad that you wrote this. Your rhyme of “Puffin” with “stuff in” is very clever. I can’t believe that Dahl’s estate allowed this to happen.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Exactly, Cheryl… kowtowing to this insidious idiocy is sheer madness and a grave disservice to this awesome author who has entertained children for decades. Thank you for your appreciation of my poem and for your sanity.

      Reply
  12. Margaret Coats

    Susan, yours will be a unique addition to my prized collection of couplet sonnets! About this kind of revision itself, Sally Cook is correct that the original work of art is never made better. Agenda-driven revisers whom she describes as “inept” usually are just that, but even if they are talented artists themselves, they are far removed from the process and moment of composition. Thus we as poets often revise our own work and improve it, even when accepting suggestions from others or responding to their criticisms. As translators, we necessarily revise what the original says, because English is incapable of saying the same. But even there we need to take care. One of the oddest translations of the Biblical Psalms was made by a scholar and composer who believed he had discovered the elusive and possibly non-existent meter in ancient Hebrew poetry. He made a translation that could be sung using his strange meter. Trouble is, he thereby butchered the easily-rendered parallelism that is the main artistic feature of the Psalms. And this revision, for the most part, preserved the savage, sexist, imperialist, and inscrutable words of the original!

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Margaret, how wonderful to hear I’m in your prized collection of couplet sonnets. You now have me yearning to look into all the couplet sonnets there are and heading down the road of producing some more. You have inspired me.

      To my mind, no one should have the right to rewrite someone else’s works… produce new works of your own by all means, but tampering with history is a no no.

      Reply
  13. Jeff Eardley

    Wow again Susan. You are so topical with this. We watched “Matilda the Musical” last night which seems to tick all the diversity boxes, but manages to keep the line, “Shut your pie-hole” and makes Emma Thompson absolutely vile. The market for pre-revision Dahl has gone through the roof this week and rightly so. You have shone your spotlight on an abomination. Well done you.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Jeff, I’m so glad to hear the people are speaking up in their own way… with their wallets… the most effective. Buying up all those original versions and shunning the classics-trashing idiocy of a ridiculous ideology is the way to go. I’m heading off to look up “Matilda the Musical” – this is the first I’ve heard of it, and I simply must see it. Jeff, thank you!

      Reply
  14. Lannie David Brockstein

    Susan, your whimsical Willy Wonky poem accurately describes an old problem that now has a workable solution.

    In Judaism, it is strictly forbidden for even a single letter of The Tanakh to be altered.

    This is partly because the ancient Hebrew language has a built-in cryptographic security feature called gematria, whereby to change the spelling of a word is to change its numeric value and thus to falsely deny its meaning as a whole.

    In Hebrew, each word not only has its exoteric definitions, but also its esoteric definitions—as revealed by its hidden gematrial value. That value cannot legitimately be altered, anymore than 2 + 2 can be altered to equal 3, 5, or any number other than 4.

    Regarding cryptography in relation to the Information Age, thankfully the newly emerging “decentralized social media platforms” that are based on Bitcoin’s revolutionary open source blockchain technology, are censorship-resistant, which is to say that it is next-to-impossible for any content published on those platforms to be altered by those platforms themselves or the cancel culture propagandists.

    Before having posted this reply to you here, I first archived it at my “lanniebrockstein” blog on the HIVE blockchain ( https://ecency.com/hive/@lanniebrockstein/archived-at-hive-reply-to ), which is one of many newly emerging decentralized social media blockchains. Although I trust The Society of Classical Poets not to alter anything about this reply, I do not trust that the company whose centralized server its website is hosted on will not someday be sold to Meta, Google, or another woke WEFtist warmonger thereby putting every poem, essay, and comment at The Society of Classical Poets in danger of being altered or censored. Now, no person (including myself), no platform (including any HIVE app), and no party (including any government) can alter or censor this reply’s original text, because to the horror of every historical revisionist (and to paraphrase the City of Las Vegas), “whatever is published on a decentralized blockchain stays published on that decentralized blockchain.”

    So long as there are thousands of anonymous individuals in hundreds of different countries who mine HIVE by serving as its witnesses, the HIVE blockchain shall in all likelihood continue to remain intact.

    Furthermore, any time the open source HIVE blockchain is forked into a new blockchain (which does not affect the HIVE blockchain) in order to form a new decentralized social media platform, my content at HIVE will remain at HIVE and it will also be automatically mirrored without any alterations onto my blog at that new platform; thus it will be further archived and even more censorship-resistant than before.

    The HIVE blockchain was itself forked from the STEEM blockchain, whereby many of my previous articles and comments at my blog on the STEEM blockchain were automatically mirrored to my blog on the HIVE blockchain.

    Anybody who is concerned about the woke WEFtist wretches that have no shame about infiltrating and ruining estates such as that of Roald Dahl, independent news organizations such as Veritas, and others, should consider archiving their content at the newly emerging censorship-resistant “decentralized social media platforms”.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Lannie, thank you very much for your enlightening comment. It is hopeful to hear there are ways around our pernicious predicament, and I am heartened by what you are saying. Just one question… what if the powers that be just choose to pull the plug on the worldwide web? I fear this is going to happen sooner than we think… or am I being hopelessly pessimistic? My thoughts have become the stuff of nightmares.

      Reply
      • Joshua C. Frank

        I think the scarier idea is that they won’t pull the plug on it. It’s been the perfect vehicle not only to push leftism, but to separate families, make people into addicts, and encourage children to make decisions to do irreversible damage to themselves. All of this gives the government and corporations more power to control us. Why wouldn’t they want to keep it going?

        I know naysayers will point out the irony of saying this online. The difference between me and the people I describe is that for me, the Internet is not a toy, but a tool. I spend most of my free time on my hobbies (reading, writing, drawing, and guitar, none of which are online) or with family and/or friends.

      • Joshua C. Frank

        Forgot to add: What’s far more likely is that the government will use the Internet as a means of surveillance and use algorithms to reward us for consuming and producing woke content and punish us for consuming and producing unwoke content. This is happening already in China today; the United States is not far off from following in their footsteps.

      • Susan Jarvis Bryant

        Josh, you have very valid points… we are living in scary times… very scary indeed.

  15. Paul Freeman

    Apparently the publisher has made a ‘U’ turn. But why the letter ‘U’ is being singled out from all the others in the alphabet, I don’t know.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      I’m glad to hear this, Paul. The answer on the letter ‘U’ front is that it doesn’t belong to the protected class of letters. There are too many letters to remember, but I do know poor old ‘U’ (who is now taking all the flack for being a right-wing bigot) isn’t one of them.

      Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Yes, the gutless publishers (Puffin) got scared at the general outcry and backed down — with, of course, a weaselly semi-explanation and a pious assurance that they were deeply attuned to “sensitivities.”

        When you think of how cowardly and effeminate these publishers are, it sickens you.

      • Paul Freeman

        I’ve just read that Huffin’ ‘n’ Puffin’ will be releasing both versions so parents can make up their minds.

      • Susan Jarvis Bryant

        Wow!! Offering a choice of the original for those who want to preserve classic literature or the rewritten edition of Dahl’s works to suit the sensibilities of sensitive parents. What an unscrupulous move. This is how that sleight of hand plays out… only the rewritten ones will appear on the library shelves so as not to offend the protected class of parents… those in the minority.

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Exactly right, Susan. The left offers free choice solely as a way to disguise their overall hegemony. Those bowdlerized versions of Dahl will essentially be the standard ones, while the liars at Puffin pretend and proclaim that they have “preserved” the originals.

  16. Joshua C. Frank

    I was thinking about the problem of what to do about censorship, how we’re going to get these important messages to children in our families. Then it hit me: We have all the stories we want—we’re poets! We can just write the important parts as poems, as I did with “The Snuff Box” and “The Little Boy Who Disobeyed.”

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Joshua, I love your answer to this problem… let’s keep all those meaningful messages alive in poetry. The poems you mention are our inspiration. Thank you!

      Reply
      • Joshua C. Frank

        You’re welcome, Susan. I’m honored that you’re taking my poems as inspiration.

        Another idea: I recommend books to people, but because the world is so stressful, we’re all less inclined to take time to commit to a whole book these days. I read to rise above what modern culture has taught me (hence my poem “Shoulders of Giants,” based on a quote from Isaac Newton)… maybe we should all write poems to encapsulate the wisdom we learn in this way!

  17. Morrison Handley-Schachler

    This was a real fun read, Susan. I haven’t see the revised versions but I fear they will be just as you say, “glum and humdrum dross.” Will the bowdlerized versions be anything that would find a publisher in their own right, without going back to a quirky and wicked original?

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      I’m so glad you enjoyed my fun read, Morrison. Thank you very much for your thought-provoking comment. As for how this will play out on the publication front… who knows these days. I am now beyond shock and horror… I wouldn’t be surprised if they changed Dahl’s name for someone sounding less archaic and patriarchal and produced a set of children’s books on the ‘Wonky Wonder of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Willy’s Fun-Free Factory’ with illustrations that get those insensitive parents (who wanted the classic versions to remain) slammed with the slur of “domestic terrorism”. In 2023, anything could happen.

      Reply
      • Mike Bryant

        Susan, can’t you see how damaging words like “fat” “ugly” and “bald” are? That must be so damaging to fat, ugly and bald children. Of course, it is much healthier to share explicit, color illustrations of every conceivable sexual act with six year-olds. If you can’t see that, you must be a white supremacist bigot, or maybe even a domestic terrorist or… maybe even a sensible parent, which is the worst sin of all.

  18. Catherine Lee

    Very clever, Susan! I am outraged about this ludicrous nonsense and cannot believe how publishers are going along with it. The whole idea is anathema to me and I’m happy to see that everyone on here agrees. It is insulting to the intelligence, hypocritical (see Mike’s comment about the trash that’s out there), and perhaps most of all, controlling and therefore terrifying for the future. Where does it stop? How dare they?! And how do they get away with it?” I agree that writers everywhere need to push back on this – well done on this poem!

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Catherine, thank you very much for your encouragement and your observations. I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, I think that rewriting an author’s works is equivalent to book burning, and Heinrich Heine knew exactly where that led. His quote tells us – “Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too.” That’s why I feel compelled to speak up as I always do… through poetry. Let’s hope our voices are heard.

      Reply
  19. Robert

    Hi Susan,

    I enjoyed reading your accurately directed quiver of rhymes and entertaining words. You touched on so many “new isms” that are undermining our culture and even lifestyles. I have only one request for the wokesters. “Take me to the one person whose life is better because of all this wreckage.”

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Robert, I’m so sorry I missed your comment. Thank you very much for the kind words of encouragement. I love your request… a request the wokesters will duly ignore because they are woefully and willfully blind to the realities of their ideologies.

      Reply
      • Robert Zimmerman

        You’re welcome Susan. I enjoyed it greatly. My kind of writing.

  20. Gregory Ross

    Susan, I just saw this sonnet, and I really enjoyed it, especially all the internal rhyme and allusions to Willy Wonka. Also, this whole thread of comments is a fantastic source of where to find great books that aren’t banned yet! I’m gonna be busy buying up what I can!

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Gregory, thank you very much for your comment. I’m glad you enjoyed the poem. I am doing exactly the same as you. I’m buying up soon-to-be-banned books. In fact, I am collecting dictionaries of old… they are getting more valuable (in many senses) by the day.

      Reply

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