SANDERS, (James) Ed(ward)

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Nationality: American. Born: Kansas City, Missouri, 17 August 1939. Education: University of Missouri, Columbia, 1957–58; New York University, B.A. in classics 1964. Family: Married Miriam Kittell in 1961; one daughter. Career: Editor and publisher, Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts, Fuck You Press, 1962–65; organizer of The Fugs rock satire group; owner, Peace Eye Bookstore, New York, 1964–70. Visiting professor, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, 1979, 1983. Awards: National Endowment for the Arts grant, 1966, 1970, fellowship, 1987; Frank O'Hara prize, 1967; Guggenheim fellowship, 1983; Before Columbus Foundation American Book award, 1988; New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in nonfiction, 1993. Address: P.O. Box 729, Woodstock, New York 12498, U.S.A.

Publications

Poetry

Poem from Jail. San Francisco, City Lights, 1963.

King Lord—Queen Freak. Cleveland, Renegade Press, 1964.

The Toe-Queen. New York, Fuck You Press, 1964.

A Valorium Edition of the Entire Extant Works of Thales! New York, Fuck You Press, 1964.

Banana: An Anthology of Banana-Erotic Poems. New York, Fuck You Press, 1965.

The Complete Sex Poems of Ed Sanders. New York, Fug-Press, 1965.

Peace Eye. Buffalo, Frontier Press, 1965; revised edition, Cleveland, Frontier Press, 1967.

Fuck God in the Ass. New York, Fuck You Press, 1967.

Shards of God. New York, Grove Press, 1971.

Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Canton, New York, Institute of Further Studies, 1973.

20,000 A.D. Plainfield, Vermont, North Atlantic, 1976.

Love and the Falling Iron. Bolinas, California, Yanagi, 1977.

The Cutting Prow. Santa Barbara, California, Am Here-Immediate Editions, 1981.

Hymn to Maple Syrup and Other Poems. Woodstock, New York, PCC, 1985.

Poems for Robin. Woodstock, New York, PCC, 1987.

Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century: Selected Poems 1960–1985. Minneapolis, Coffee House Press, 1987.

The Ocean Étude and Other Poems. Woodstock, New York, PCC, 1990.

Hymn to the Rebel Cafe. Santa Rosa, California, Black Sparrow, 1993.

1968: A History in Verse. Santa Rosa, California, Black Sparrow, 1997.

The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg: A Narrative Poem. Woodstock, New York, Overlook Press, 2000.

Recordings: Sanders Truckstop, Reprise Records, 1970; Beer Cans on the Moon, Reprise Records, 1972; Songs in Ancient Greek, Olufsen Records, 1990.

Plays (musical dramas)

The Municipal Power Cantata, with others (produced Woodstock, New York, 1978). Woodstock, New York, Poetry Crime and Culture Press, 1978.

The Karen Silkwood Cantata (produced Woodstock, New York, 1979)

Star Peace (produced Oslo, Norway, 1986)

Cassandra (produced Woodstock, New York, 1992)

Screenplays: Amphetamine Head; Mongolian Cluster Fuck.

Novel

Fame and Love in New York. Berkeley, California, Turtle Island Foundation, 1980.

Short Stories

Tales of Beatnik Glory. New York, Stonehill, 1975; revised edition, as Tales of Beatnik Glory Volumes I & II, New York, Citadel, 1990.

Other

The Family: The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion. New York, Dutton, 1971; London, Hart Davis, 1972; revised edition, as The Family: The Manson Group and Aftermath, New York, Signet/New American Library, 1990.

Vote!, with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. New York, Warner, 1972.

Investigative Poetry. San Francisco, City Lights, 1976.

The Party: A Chronological Perspective on a Confrontation at a Buddhist Seminary. Woodstock, New York, PCC, 1980.

The ZD Generation. Barrytown, New York, Station Hill Press, 1980.

Creativity and the Self-Fulfilled Bard. Woodstock, New York, PCCPublications, 1992.

Chekhov. Santa Rosa, California, Black Sparrow, 1995.

America: A History in Verse. Santa Rosa, California, Black Sparrow, 1999.

Editor, Poems for Marilyn. New York, Fuck You Press, 1962.

Editor, Bugger: An Anthology of Buttockry. New York, Fuck You Press, 1964.

Editor, Despair: Poems to Come Down By. New York, FU Press, 1964.

Editor, with Ken Weaver and Betsy Klein, The Fugs' Song Book! New York, Peace Eye Bookshop, 1965.

Editor, The Party. Woodstock, New York, Poetry Crime and Culture Press, 1980.

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Manuscript Collection: University of Connecticut Library, Storrs.

Critical Studies: Interview with Tandy Sturgeon, in Contemporary Literature (Madison, Wisconsin), 31(3), fall 1990, and with Sean Thomas Dougherty, in Long Shot, 13, 1992.

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In Ed Sanders's poetry the raw energy of a 1960s-style peace march, a rock concert, and an orgy impels a fine intelligence. Many of his poems can be read as political protest, and some might be read, by a reader intent upon it, as pornography. The best of his work in Peace Eye and 20,000 A.D.—probably his two most interesting books—should be read, however, as representing a perhaps unexpected turn in the tradition of Pound and Olson.

"Ed Sanders' language," Olson writes, "advances in a direction of production which probably isn't even guessed at." His language is always near the breaking point, always at the verge of howl and groans. Rude, slangy, obscene, and blasphemous, it violates any remaining verbal taboos. At the same time, however, it frequently spills over into Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and glyphlike drawings, giving the impression that one language, or even language itself, cannot contain Sanders's, to use one of his own terms, "Endless Gush" (which, it should be noted, is a translation of Anaximander's central term, tò ápeiron). Especially when he recites it himself, one has a sense in his language of an archaic power. At its best, however, it is more than that, for we begin to sense the relationship between the "holy" and the "accursed" as it is recorded in the etymology of "sacred." The closing section of "The Fugs," "Hymn to the Vagina of Mercy," and "Arise Garland Flame" and "Holy Was Demeter Walking the Corn Furrow" are, as it were, songs from a satyr play.

Sanders's poetry is truly outrageous; that is its beauty. It is a test of Blake's proverbs of hell. Read at length, it loses its shock value and tends to become tedious, but it is not intended for that kind of consumption. His poems are performance pieces for an athletic performer like Sanders himself, who was the lead singer with a rock group for several years.

A later turn in Sanders's work can also be seen as an outgrowth of the Pound-Olson tradition, which proposed poetry as a gathering of significant information. Sanders characteristically pushes any possibility to its literal limits. We must, Olson says, be "cooked / and ruled by information." Sanders's response to this demand is what he calls "investigative poetry." The Family, his careful, objective, and thorough report on the Charles Manson case, was his first investigative poem, or at least the idea of investigative poetry derived from his experience of writing the book. Manson was a sign that something had gone seriously wrong with the political movements of the 1960s. The message of investigative poetry, though it stretches traditional definitions of poetry perhaps even beyond the breaking point, is that no political movement can be effective without complete information. It is an attempt to find a fulcrum for political power at precisely the point where governments are most vulnerable—in gathering, organizing, and effectively communicating knowledge. In the manifesto "To the Z-D Generation," Sanders writes, "Never hesitate to open up a case file even upon the bloodiest of beasts or plots! We will see the day of relentless pursuit of data! Interrogate the Abyss." In The Karen Silkwood Cantata, first performed on May 20, 1979, Sanders combined performance with the results of investigation.

Sanders's work as a poet, performer, fiction writer, and journalist is of a piece. In all of these modes he combines outrage at greed, bigotry, and tyrannical forms of enforced morality with both an oldfashioned sense of decency and the insistence upon an ecstatic union with the other. At the same time he is able as a poet to give his attention to such utterly mundane and pragmatic matters as the hearings of the New York state legislature on telephone rates and nuclear energy.

—Don Byrd