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Title: A New Hope Author: Voltairine de Cleyre Date: March 15th, 1893 Language: en Topics: poetry Source: Retrieved on May 25th, 2015 from http://www.deadanarchists.org/newhope.html Notes: This poem first appeared in the Boston Investigator (Boston, MA) on Wednesday, March 15, 1893, page 3.]
by Robert P. Helms
The celebrated anarchist, freethinker, poet, feminist, and public
intellectual Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) was twenty-six years old
in 1893, living in West Philadelphia and at her best game as a writer
and activist. She was then contributing occasional letters, articles,
and a few poems to the Boston Investigator, which in its day (1831–1904)
was a well-respected and lively forum for liberals, atheists, and
dissident religionists.
Until recently there were no on-line databases for 19^(th) century
radical newspapers, and it was not so long ago that the internet didn’t
exist. Even now in 2013, the database where I found this old gem is for
paying customers only. But even before the internet came into its own,
the Boston Investigator was not to be found in university libraries. I
remember looking for it and having other researchers ask me if I knew
where it might be. Now, one can search the full text of the paper’s
first 64 years of publication. Thus it seems that in spite of a surge in
interest in this author since Paul Avrich’s biography An American
Anarchist: The Life Of Voltairine de Cleyre (1978) and three new books
by or about her in 2004–05, this poem “The New Hope” evidently has not
been mentioned or reprinted in the century since the poet’s death, or
perhaps not since it first appeared.
I have uncovered a few other lost pieces by Voltairine de Cleyre that
involved a bit of detective work, but the present discovery was merely
knowing her work and searching a newly available source. Even so, I am
very proud to present this forgotten poem in which the great anarchist
declares her independence from superstition.
by V. de Cleyre