America: A History in Verse, Vol. 2: 1940-1961

Founder and guiding spirit of the satirical folk-rock band the Fugs, Ed Sanders is America's bard, the cheerful, chanting poet-prophet who sings our collective life and times. His present project, the multi-volume America: A History in Verse, is his most ambitious to date, a free-wheeling, episodic, free-verse chronicle of the American Century, from the explosion of the Maine in Havana Harbor down to the present day. The first two volumes, cataloging the years 1900 through 1961, were welcomed by one critic as "an epic finding-out-for-oneself of salient moments in the public and private history of the 20th century bold, sweeping, hilarious, heart-rending, and thought-provoking." 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."