Poems that you love

[rayheinrich]

I think misogyny or racism are very minor personality issues in a writer. It can limit their work and its appeal, which is punishment enough.
But what would be really interesting is if there was a writer who was so far gone to the other side, that redemption was impossible, and yet wrote powerfully. Like a serial paedophile or Nazi war criminal. Or a KKK grand master personally implicated in several lynchings. Now that would be a real test of how well we can separate the dancer from the dance.

    Two famous examples:
D.W. Griffith, one of the seminal directors of film. His film "The Birth of a Nation" is considered to be in the top 10
of every film ever made. In his film, where he pretty much created the basics for all films after it, he brilliantly
portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as heroes who save a white woman from being raped by subhuman blacks.

Leni Riefenstahl was a pioneering woman film director who made extraordinary propaganda films ("Triumph of the Will"
her most famous) for the Nazis. And she did so willingly and fervently. Her compositional/editing techniques are
considered groundbreaking.

So, yeah, people (at least critics) seem to be able to separate art from artist.  

Religious books not counting, obviously, because God does all of these things regularly.

    Funny how, most of the time, authors come out looking like the good guys.