American History in Verse by Ed Sanders

An active Beat-era "peacenik" with a penchant for poetry and music seems a uniquely talented individual. Ed Sanders wrote the History of America in Verse which starts in 1450 and ends in 2000 with the stolen election. He built his own instruments, and his 1982 performance in Times Square of Henri Matisse inspired many; and he is the founder of The Fugs, a kind of punk rock band avant la lettre. His writing (History of America) is clear, blunt, succinct, witty, off-hand, irreverent, and true, and bears the trace influences of Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass), Charles Olsen (of the Maximus Poems) & Allen Ginsberg (Howl). His writing, again, is politically savvy and recalls the Civil Rights Era and the happenings of his youth in the early Sixties when he placed flowers in the rifle barrels of National Guardsmen and exorcised the Pentagon. He now makes his Yippie home in Woodstock, New York where he publishes a newspaper.