Let's Not Keep Fighting the Trojan War: New & Selected Poems 1986-2009

by Ed Sanders, Joanne Kyger (Introduction)

The major work from a hero of Beat poetry, political activism, and rock 'n' roll.

“Sanders [is] the poet-maestro of American history.”—Michael McClure

“Sanders has been an astonishing and fertile presence n our cutlural and political landscape...But it is Sanders's poetry, more than anything else he does, that pulls together all the varied strands of his interests to weave them in to the body of one of our century's most coherent poetics.”—Andrei Codrescu, National Public Radio

“In Sanders' poetry we find...one of the clearest and most necessary bodies of work still being written today.”— Poetry Project Newsletter

Picking up where Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century left off and spanning more than two decades, Edward Sanders’ new collection animates the whole of human history—breathing new life into ancient stories, celebrating artists and activists, telling tales of beatnik escapades, eulogizing friends and politicians, and lamenting the follies that have led us to war time and again.

Illustrated throughout, Sanders’ poems contain visuals that range from drawings of Egyptian hieroglyphs to a scan of Robert Creeley’s sage counsel, written on a napkin: “Things / come and go. / Then / let them.”

Sanders also offers his own advice in “To the Revolutionaries Not Yet Born”:

Work in extra dimensions
Think 100 years ahead
Enjoy your Revolution
Show enough mercy so
that Mercy shows the way

With exuberant pragmatism and visionary scholarship, Sanders continues to mark the way forward for poets and peacemakers, rock 'n' rollers, and revolutionaries.

Edward Sanders is the best-selling author of the Charles Manson exposé The Family, author of the recently published Poems for New Orleans, and a recipient of the American Book Award. He is also a founding member of the legendary rock group The Fugs, a classics scholar, publisher, former bookseller, and pioneer in investigative poetics. He lives in Woodstock, New York.

Genres: Poetry

270 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2009

About the author

Ed 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.

Reviews

[Phil Overeem · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a sucker for Sanders and this cannot be objective. Our politics align, and I admire his system of poetics--which works. They don't all. A national treasure, this Missourian.

[Ed Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Old Ed Sanders up to his old tricks from Woodstock, NY.
Very good poems on Allen Ginsberg and Robert Creeley especially "Read,Practice,Play" a short poem and too the point.
Sanders has survived the '60s and moving into the 21st
century with his style of poetics.
Read this book you will not be disappointed.

[Zack · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-83...

[Oakley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sanders just gets better with age. Poetry doesn't usually make me laugh out loud.