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America: A History in Verse #2
America: A History in Verse, Vol 2: 1940-1961
In "America", Sanders embarks on an epic, non-Herodotean finding-out-for-oneself of salient moments and movements in the public/private history of the American 20th century.
- GenresPoetry
422 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2000
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21 people want to read
About the author
Ed Sanders
138 books80 followersEd Sanders is an American poet, singer, social activist, environmentalist, author and publisher. He has been called a bridge between the Beat and Hippie generations.
Sanders was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He dropped out of Missouri University in 1958 and hitchhiked to New York City’s Greenwich Village. He wrote his first major poem, "Poem from Jail," on toilet paper in his cell after being jailed for protesting against nuclear proliferation in 1961.
In 1962, he founded the avant-garde journal, Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts. Sanders opened the Peace Eye Bookstore (147 Avenue A in what was then the Lower East Side), which became a gathering place for bohemians and radicals.
Sanders graduated from New York University in 1964, with a degree in Classics. In 1965, he founded The Fugs with Tuli Kupferberg. The band broke up in 1969 and reformed in 1984.
In 1971, Sanders wrote The Family, a profile of the events leading up to the Tate-LaBianca murders. He obtained access to the Manson Family by posing as a "Satanic guru-maniac and dope-trapped psychopath."
As of 2006, Sanders lives in Woodstock, New York where he publishes the Woodstock Journal with his wife of over 36 years, the writer and painter Miriam R. Sanders. He also invents musical instruments including the Talking Tie, the microtonal Microlyre and the Lisa Lyre, a musical contraption involving light-activated switches and a reproduction of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
Sanders was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He dropped out of Missouri University in 1958 and hitchhiked to New York City’s Greenwich Village. He wrote his first major poem, "Poem from Jail," on toilet paper in his cell after being jailed for protesting against nuclear proliferation in 1961.
In 1962, he founded the avant-garde journal, Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts. Sanders opened the Peace Eye Bookstore (147 Avenue A in what was then the Lower East Side), which became a gathering place for bohemians and radicals.
Sanders graduated from New York University in 1964, with a degree in Classics. In 1965, he founded The Fugs with Tuli Kupferberg. The band broke up in 1969 and reformed in 1984.
In 1971, Sanders wrote The Family, a profile of the events leading up to the Tate-LaBianca murders. He obtained access to the Manson Family by posing as a "Satanic guru-maniac and dope-trapped psychopath."
As of 2006, Sanders lives in Woodstock, New York where he publishes the Woodstock Journal with his wife of over 36 years, the writer and painter Miriam R. Sanders. He also invents musical instruments including the Talking Tie, the microtonal Microlyre and the Lisa Lyre, a musical contraption involving light-activated switches and a reproduction of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 22, 2019
Edward Sanders is a poet, singer, social activist, environmentalist, author and founder of the Investigative Poetry movement. His 1976 manifesto Investigative Poetry* was published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Books. He has been regarded as a link between the beatniks and the hippies.
In 1975 he realized that the great extended poems of the 20th century (such as Eliot’s “The Wasteland,” Crane’s “The Bridge,” Pound’s “Cantos,” Williams’ “Paterson,” etc.) all relied on historical research. This realization took him beyond the romantic notion that poets are inspired, if not by the Muses, then by some soulful, expressive passion. He urged poets to go beyond that myth. Poetry can come from research and study. Poets can not only rewrite history; they can make history.
Taking a further step beyond investigation, Sanders adds a pedagogical element to his theories. He claims poetry can teach readers about their history and politics. By going even one step further, education can lead to his ultimate goal, that of empowering readers to re-energize the traditions of activism and art.
From his manifesto, “Investigative poesy is freed from capitalism, churchism, and other totalitarianisms; free from racisms, free from allegiance to napalm-dropping military police states—a poetry adequate to discharge from its verse-grids the undefiled high energy purely-distilled verse-frags, using every bardic skill and meter and method of the last 5 or 6 generations, in order to describe every aspect (no more secret governments!) of the historical present, while aiding the future, even placing bard-babble once again into a role as shaper of the future.”
He argued that “the essence of investigative poetry is to create lines of lyric beauty that descend from data clusters, empowering readers with a melodic blizzard of data‐fragments.” By using data‐fragments, verse-grids and verse-frags, he created layered, historically rich, political poems. His book-length poems on literary figures and American history include Chekhov, 1968: A History in Verse, and The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg.
In 1998, Sanders began work on a 3-volume America, A History in Verse. I read Volume 2, 1940-196. His work is very much in the spirit of Howard Zinn focusing on the people rather than on politicians He is quite often catty and rather sarcastic. Repeatedly the reader will iterate the refrain, “Hmm, I never thought about it that way,” and “Wow, they didn’t teach me that in school.”
*http://www.poetspath.com/transmission...
In 1975 he realized that the great extended poems of the 20th century (such as Eliot’s “The Wasteland,” Crane’s “The Bridge,” Pound’s “Cantos,” Williams’ “Paterson,” etc.) all relied on historical research. This realization took him beyond the romantic notion that poets are inspired, if not by the Muses, then by some soulful, expressive passion. He urged poets to go beyond that myth. Poetry can come from research and study. Poets can not only rewrite history; they can make history.
Taking a further step beyond investigation, Sanders adds a pedagogical element to his theories. He claims poetry can teach readers about their history and politics. By going even one step further, education can lead to his ultimate goal, that of empowering readers to re-energize the traditions of activism and art.
From his manifesto, “Investigative poesy is freed from capitalism, churchism, and other totalitarianisms; free from racisms, free from allegiance to napalm-dropping military police states—a poetry adequate to discharge from its verse-grids the undefiled high energy purely-distilled verse-frags, using every bardic skill and meter and method of the last 5 or 6 generations, in order to describe every aspect (no more secret governments!) of the historical present, while aiding the future, even placing bard-babble once again into a role as shaper of the future.”
He argued that “the essence of investigative poetry is to create lines of lyric beauty that descend from data clusters, empowering readers with a melodic blizzard of data‐fragments.” By using data‐fragments, verse-grids and verse-frags, he created layered, historically rich, political poems. His book-length poems on literary figures and American history include Chekhov, 1968: A History in Verse, and The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg.
In 1998, Sanders began work on a 3-volume America, A History in Verse. I read Volume 2, 1940-196. His work is very much in the spirit of Howard Zinn focusing on the people rather than on politicians He is quite often catty and rather sarcastic. Repeatedly the reader will iterate the refrain, “Hmm, I never thought about it that way,” and “Wow, they didn’t teach me that in school.”
*http://www.poetspath.com/transmission...
August 3, 2013
Few better ways to learn about history than through Sanders' century-long verse history. The last volume (1970-2000) is only on CD-ROM, and I am going to finish it this week.
January 3, 2019
thoughtful & rollicking slip-slide through 20 years that ended 20 years before i was born. like finally meeting that wild funny uncle who died a long time ago & you’ve heard all the stories about him but never like this.
everything you never thought to ask about ww2, mccarthyism, nuclear fallout, paul robeson, freedom rides or rock & roll. unapologetically lefty - like zinn written in unrhyming beat poetry.
full of tiny gems like this:
“i am not a nationalist...,” he said
i am a peacemonger.”
-charlie chaplin
khrushchev visited iowa farms & hollywood
he’d wanted to see disneyland
& threw a temper tantrum
when “security” concerns
kept him from mickey
i always know a book is good when it makes me want to find/read loads of other things by people of different identities than the one who wrote it. it has its own particular perspective — limited like anyone’s — but it shoots outward like fireworks that spell ‘look over there! & here! & there too!’
everything you never thought to ask about ww2, mccarthyism, nuclear fallout, paul robeson, freedom rides or rock & roll. unapologetically lefty - like zinn written in unrhyming beat poetry.
full of tiny gems like this:
“i am not a nationalist...,” he said
i am a peacemonger.”
-charlie chaplin
khrushchev visited iowa farms & hollywood
he’d wanted to see disneyland
& threw a temper tantrum
when “security” concerns
kept him from mickey
i always know a book is good when it makes me want to find/read loads of other things by people of different identities than the one who wrote it. it has its own particular perspective — limited like anyone’s — but it shoots outward like fireworks that spell ‘look over there! & here! & there too!’
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews