Search results for ""author edward sanders""

“Seething Nation! Vast & Flowing! Day & Night & Dawn!” Poet Edward Sanders tells the story of America in incandescent verse. Bold, sweeping, investigative, rhapsodic, hilarious, heart-rendering, thought-provoking, Edward Sanders’ three-volume, America: A History in Verse uniquely and brilliantly tells “the story of America...a million stranded fabric / woven by billions of hands & minds.” It is by turns angry, wistful, defiant and extremely funny re-inventions of historical and biographical worlds, a highly original mix of chronicle, anecdote, document, reportage, paean and polemic. Volume 3, 1962-1970 begins with “the time of a randy young president with a bad back / who attracted the squint-eyed scorn / & even the hatred of the / National Security Grouch Apparatus,” of “a strange man named Johnson / & then the reappearance of an even stranger man named Nixon.” It was the time of Vietnam, civil rights, space shots, and evil—”the only word for some of it.” But it was also the time of the poet’s youth and Oh! what bliss to be young, alive, and high in those excruciatingly interesting times, those days “when we searched for meaning / in the sawdust floors of rebel cafés / or the stardust soars of psychedelic haze.” What a whirling hurry of years it was, what a flash of time! And what a necessary, twenty-first-century Whitman Sanders is, channeling Clio for our great nation, ”where so many sing without cease / work without halt / shoulder without shudder / to bring the Feather of Justice to every / bell tower, biome & blade of grass.” Long may Sanders sing us the 1960s, and long may his America “dwell in peace, freedom & equality / out on its spiraling arm / in the Milky Way.”

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“Seething Nation! Vast & Flowing! Day & Night & Dawn!” Bold, sweeping, investigative, rhapsodic, hilarious, heart-rendering, thought-provoking, Edward Sanders' three-volume, America: A History in Verse uniquely and brilliantly tells "the story of America...a million stranded fabric / woven by billions of hands & minds”. It is by turns angry, wistful, defiant and extremely funny re-inventions of historical and biographical worlds, a highly original mix of chronicle, anecdote, document, reportage, paean and polemic. Volume 1, 1900-1939 chronicles the birth of the American century through one world war and to the brink of a second. Not since Leaves of Grass has there been such an un-ironic attempt to give voice to “the rhapsody of a great nation / where so many sing without cease / work without halt / shoulder without shudder / to bring the Feather of Justice to every / bell tower, biome & blade of grass / in Graceful America.” Long may Sanders sing our common song, and long may his America “dwell in peace, freedom & equality / out on its spiraling arm / in the Milky Way.”

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A Book of Glyphs is a facsimile reproduction of legendary author, musician and Fugs founder Ed Sanders’ first book-length work of glyphs, which he created in Florence, Italy in 2008, using colored pencils and a small sketchbook. Though each piece stands on its own, collectively the 72 glyphs convey, with characteristic humility and humor, many of the themes explored by Sanders over his long and diverse career, including history, myth, activism and pacifism. The glyph--“a drawing that is charged with literary, emotional, historical or mythic and poetic intensity”--has been a dimension of Sanders’ poetry since 1962; he cites Zen rock gardens, the markings on Egyptian tombs and the typographic designs in John Cage’s writings as influences in the development of the form. Sanders’ name for the original notebook is “Smile-Book of Grace-Joy,” which aptly describes the range of concerns explored in this important and joyful work.

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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 dimensionsThink 100 years aheadEnjoy your RevolutionShow enough mercy so that Mercy shows the wayWith 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.

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