Monkey’s Book Burning
(Remembering Cervantes’s Scrutiny of the Library
and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451)
Who burnt Monkey’s books?
Who took them from their shelves,
evicted them into the courtyard,
built them into book stacks, like hay,
then applied gasoline, and a lighted match?
Monkey watches in horror as smoke
and flame devour his beloveds.
He tries to approach, but the fire is too hot.
One book jumps out from the smoke,
still smoldering, and monkey
snatches it and carries it away beneath his coat,
the fire burn branded into its cover,
the skin still sizzling on monkey’s hand.
How many books were burned that day?
How many monkeys now walk in the woods,
trying to re-create their lives, circulating
their memories by word of mouth?
Moth is to candle as book is to flame.
Monkey runs his hand in and out of the candle.
He recalls the bonfires in other, far off streets
and coughs through the throat burn of smoke
as he touches the blistered scars of flame.
rogermoorepoet 
I’m still pissed off about them torching the Alexandria Library.
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So many similar events in history … Cervantes parodied the Inquisition in the Quixote. He got away with it, though. Nowaayas, we still burn books and delete web pages as well!
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One of my favorite books – the prophetic parallels to our day in Fahrenheit 451. And the monkey obviously has highly esteemed a book, any book. The key to enlightenment- wise primate! More to come? Excellent!
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I’ll add a few more, I think. They’re easy to copy and don’t need much re-writing, if any. Matching a cartoon or a photo is much more of a problem. Maybe I should do some specific cartoons for my Monkey poems: now that’s a great idea!
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That is a great idea!
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Excellent, Roger! This is a great piece of writing. I was just thinking about this today. I posted a piece inspired by a little boy who was drumming along peacefully in prayer last week with his elders in N. Dakota when they received a militarized police response (including tanks and drones) and 21 arrests. What book gets burned next? What prayer lands you in jail? Same theme…
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I guess I’ll be putting some more Monkey Poems up: keep your eyes peeled. I have only just got back in and haven’t read your piece yet. More later.
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😊No rush…enjoy your day!
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Will do, Tanya. Beautiful sunshine here right now and the leaves are turning bright red: a wonderland. Clare and I just went out for a little drive, just to drink in all that beauty.
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Excellent Roger…your monkey certainly gets himself into some scrapes
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Thanks, Mr. Cake. He is indeed a very adventurous existentialist monkey and you will be seeing much more of him. I am glad you have enjoyed what you’ve seen so far.
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I do indeed, not really a fan of Russell, though I like Wittingstein. More of the adventurous existential monkey please.
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Russell’s History of Western Philosophy certainly helped me sort out my philosophical systems. Wittgenstein I like, also the Spanish philosophers: Ortega y Gasset, Unamuno, Julian Marias among others.
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I thought it was a great overview but I was irritated by his habit of knocking down each philosopher and system and then saying that his logical positivism was the last word in philosophy. He barely Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, two important philosophers when it comes to aesthetics and for artists. Also his treatment of Plato. He fell out Wittingstein because of wittingstein’s mystical streak. I always preferred continental philosophy to the Anglo-American tradition which seems like a sterile game. I hope we don’t fall out though over this, I can be opinionated but I am always open to persuasion.
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No problem my end: I was into Sartre and Camus long before I was force fed Russell and Ayer. And this was in my teens! Deep down, I am not a philosopher: literary critic and creative writer … but the philosophy does kick in occasionally.
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Camus on the Surrealists is interesting in the book The Rebel, though as the existential were succeeding the surrealists as the intellectual fashion he is a bit harsh (though I think you can guess where my loyalties lie). I am nowhere systematic to be a philosopher, plus I like style (hence Plato and Nietzsche) over terminology (Hegel gives me a headache).
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Hegel gives everyone a headache. I much prefer the nature mysticism of the Spanish school (Discalced Carmelites: St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila and Fray Luis de Leon — Augustinian and Neo-platonic in Fray Luis’s case) to the contemporary philosophies … that’s probably why I live in the backwoods in Canada!
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I love Heraclitus particularly…gnomic and obscure
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One of Quevedo’s great books: El Heraclito Cristiano … 1613 …
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Please tell me more. I am very intrigued.
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Try this article online — it’s an old one and the first of the series. It should download by PDF
http://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/renref/article/view/11997/8878
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Hmmm it’s doesn’t show up as PDF on my phone, will try later on the laptop.
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It might be a closed link to which I, as author, have access. Mind you I searched the web for it. Try Renaissance & Reformation (the U of T review) and then type my name in under search. That’s how I got there.
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