Let's Not Keep Fighting the Trojan War

In the 1960s, Edward Sanders co-founded the groundbreaking rock band, The Fugs, opened the Peace Eye Bookstore, and appeared on the cover of Life magazine. He is a classics scholar, pioneer in investigative poetics, inventor of musical instruments, publisher of the Woodstock Journal, and author of many books, including the bestselling Charles Manson exposé The Family and the ambitious, multi-volume project, America: A History in Verse. He lives in Woodstock, New York.

“Sanders is the poet-maestro of American history.” —Michael McClure“In Sanders’ poetry we find . . . one of the clearest and most necessary bodies of work still being written today.” —Poetry Project Newsletter“Sanders represents a sense of cultural immanence running from Archilochus and Aeschylus to Olson and Ginsberg, Blackburn and Berrigan, while his interest in ‘investigative poetry’ allows him to make relevant to his art a channel-surfer’s cable lineup of contemporary concerns, from black holes to Masons to Mason to health-care reform to toxic-waste disposal to terrorism.” —Antioch Review“One marvels at [Edward Sander’s] synergetic fusion of his poetic calling and his laudable career as an activist. The power of the righteous utterance to mutate reality is an article of faith for the countercultural leader, who famously led chants to exorcise the Pentagon. His lyrics ring forth optimism.” —Chronogram