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  • To John Steinbeck
  • Lucia Trent (bio)

Your weapons are not shot or splintering shell. With simple words you telescope the hell In which our migrant countrymen are bogged. No wonder those who've diligently hogged The acres' bounty cry against the light Your pages channel down the stolid night. More than a thousand scientists' research Your single fiery work of art will smirch The lords of profit and all their greedy ilk: The poor of heart whose bodies swell in silk, The poor of soul whose smugness breeds decay While fellow humans toil their lives away. John Steinbeck, men salute your daring name You photograph so well a nation's shame!

Lucia Trent

Lucia Trent (1897–1977) and her husband Ralph Cheyney were activist poets of the early twentieth century. Together, they edited the magazine Contemporary Vision. She published many works intended to raise the consciousness of the middle and working classes, including Children of Fire and Shadow (1929) and Thank You, America! (1937). “To John Steinbeck” appeared in a periodical in 1938 or 1939, and then was published in Davis' Anthology of Newspaper Verse for 1939: 21st Annual Edition (New York: Henry Harrison, 1940).

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