To the Editor:

Re “Toni Morrison’s Song of America” (Op-Ed, Aug. 7):

In a country whose president shows his aversion to the written word, Tracy K. Smith’s gracious remembrance of Toni Morrison is a persuasive testimony not only to a beloved friend and writer but also to the necessity of literary imagination in a free society.

When our leaders fail to inspire a more unifying vision of ourselves, our poets and novelists often illuminate a more hopeful path toward the realization of our ideals.

As William Carlos Williams wrote, “It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.”