"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-wingwriters 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 anAmerican writer, and his McCarthy era poems brilliantly counteract theoften apolitical, rather socially aseptic poetry of their time."-- Reginald Gibbons, editor of TriQuarterlyThe radical journalist and poet Edwin Rolfe wrote eloquently of the hardshipsof the Great Depression, the experience of war, and McCarthy era witch-hunts.More than fifty of his best poems--some beautifully lyrical and some devastatinglysatiric--are included in Trees Became Torches. Rolfe was widelyknown as the poet laureate of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, the Americanswho volunteered to help defend the elected Spanish government during the1936-39 civil war.

"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-wingwriters 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 anAmerican writer, and his McCarthy era poems brilliantly counteract theoften apolitical, rather socially aseptic poetry of their time."-- Reginald Gibbons, editor of TriQuarterlyThe radical journalist and poet Edwin Rolfe wrote eloquently of the hardshipsof the Great Depression, the experience of war, and McCarthy era witch-hunts.More than fifty of his best poems--some beautifully lyrical and some devastatinglysatiric--are included in Trees Became Torches. Rolfe was widelyknown as the poet laureate of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, the Americanswho volunteered to help defend the elected Spanish government during the1936-39 civil war.