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Overview
“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 2 1940-1961 begins and ends with America on the brink of a war and great changes—in 1940 “with greed & evil / somewhat in check / when compared to Europe,” and in 1961, “at the beginning of a decade / that revealed the best & the worst / of a great nation.”
Sanders’ reinventions of past worlds offer a moving masque of time constructed out of multiple narrative aspects and tones, skillfully and variously implemented by a poetic style of compacted history.
Volume 2 1940-1961 begins and ends with America on the brink of a war and great changes—in 1940 “with greed & evil / somewhat in check / when compared to Europe,” and in 1961, “at the beginning of a decade / that revealed the best & the worst / of a great nation.”
Sanders’ reinventions of past worlds offer a moving masque of time constructed out of multiple narrative aspects and tones, skillfully and variously implemented by a poetic style of compacted history.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781574231496 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | David R. Godine, Publisher |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2000 |
| Edition description: | SIGNED |
| Pages: | 422 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.24(w) x 9.42(h) x 1.53(d) |
About the Author
Edward Sanders wrote his first poem on jail-cell toilet paper after being arrested for protesting the launch of nuclear submarines in 1961. Political protest remains an intrinsic part of his poetic vision to this day. In 1976, Sanders founded Investigative Poetry; the principles of this movement appear most prominently in his History in Verse series.
Sander's signature is an imaginative compression of historical fact into poetic myth; his mode of "compacted history." Angry, wistful, defiant and extremely funny, Sanders' reinventions of historical worlds offer a moving masque of time constructed out of multiple narrative aspects and tones, skillfully and variously implemented by rhetorical techniques of chronicle, anecdote, document, reportage, paean and polemic. "Poetry should again assume responsibility for the description of history", Ed Sanders proclaimed in his momentous 1976 manifesto on Investigative Poetics. Dedicated since then to a "relentless pursuit of data", Sanders has distinguished himself as the historically engaged poet of his generation, the one poet of imagination whose work also brings us an important vision of a world existing outside itself.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
1940
The year began with greed & evil
somewhat in check
when compared to Europe
where raw malevolence attended to nations
with slashing glee
though the US too was building a Lyre of Violence
with razory strings.
Europe was at war
after Hitler invaded Poland in August of '39
though the US, for now, had made itself "neutral"
Einstein had already written to FDR about
"extremely powerful bombs of a new type"
he urged the nation to build
& then, in November, the Russians attacked Finland
to grab land so as to prevent any Nazi blitzkrieg
over the isthmus to Leningrad
after which the'40sbegan
with shapeshifting evil tumoring
heart to heart
& Good sore-shouldered from carrying gunnies of hatred
God blessed America for me
Not all things were convulsed with evil, as when
that February 23 Woody Guthrie
in a beat-up old hotel on 43rd Street
wrote a song titled
"God Blessed America"
The first line was headed for the memory of a Nation:
"this land is your land, this land is my land"
and each verse in the early version closed with
"God blessed America for me"
a blessing that was later replaced by
"This land was made for you and me"
It was a Moment for America
On February 29
Gone with the Wind
won the Academy Award for Best Picture
& Hattie McDaniel was the first Black to win an Oscar
for best supporting actress
in G with the W
March 1
Richard Wright's
Native Son
came forth from Harper & Brothers
a Book-of-the-Month club selection
& 250,000 copies were sold the first 3 weeks
The Almanac Singers
Pete Seeger met Woody Guthrie March 3
at a Grapes of Wrath migrant worker
benefit concert
& soon they formed the Almanac Singers
Guthrie was from Oklahoma
where as a kid
he'd sung country music with local bands
He went to California
to flee the dusts of wrath
Became a popular country singer on th' progressive station
KFVD, in the late '30s
"Talking Dust Bowl" and "Do Re Mi"
were among his protest songs
for the farmers destroyed by
laissez-faire economics
In 1940 he came to NYC
& recorded his Dust Bowl Ballads for RCA Victor
sang with the Almanacs
& wrote for the Daily Worker
Woody Guthrie
a great American leftist
March 18
Hitler and Mussolini
met at the Brenner Pass
on the Italian-Austrian border
and joined forces for WWII
The Muss-man thirsting for terror Terrae
i.e., to grab land before Hitler got it
* * *
It was the year the American Civil Liberties Union
fired Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
the inspiration for Joe Hill's "Rebel Girl"
—& one of the founders of the ACLU—
'cause she was a commie
* * *
March 28
Britain and France agreed not to make a separate peace with Germany
April 10
Hitler invaded Norway
It took the Nazis two months, then they
installed Vidkun Quisling
head of a small Norse fascist party
to run things for Hit-vom
Denmark was also conquered, same day
Enigma
April 15
British cryptanalysts first deciphered
the key used for encoding messages on
the German "Enigma" equipment
used for radio transmissions
after which the Allies could decipher a good proportion
of Germany's secret message
Blitzkrieg
May 9
Just before midnight
Hitler ai yi yi'd the following to his troops:
"The fight beginning today decides the fate
of the German nation
for the next thousand years!"
The Germans' official reason was
that they had "evidence" the Allies were scheming
a swarm through th' Low Countries into the German Ruhr
Then it was what they called a blitzkrieg—
modeled on lightning
the smash bash slash of evil commingled in quickness
as gliders swooped soldiers into Belgium
and paratroopers, some disguised in Dutch uniforms,
filthed into the Netherlands
and tiny Luxembourg sullied w/ [SYMBOL OMITTED] 's.
By this the Germans
side-swarmed France's putatively impenetrable Maginot Line
& cornered
th' English and French troops at Dunkirk.
He was sure that the swastika soon
would rup! and pop in the wind
on London's buildings
Churchill Appointed Prime Minister
May 10
Neville Chamberlain resigned as British Prime Minister
—enough conservatives deserted him
and Winston Churchill formed a coalition
gov't, including the Labor Party
Churchill was his own minister of defense.
After that, he led his nation in war
chomping on a thick cigar
in a narrow brimmed hat
flashing his V signs
& mixing his undeniable eloquence
with the steel of his soul to
fight for every flower and stone
of England
till the collapse of Germany in '45 (and his defeat
in the 1945 election).
May 14
the Dutch army surrendered
Germans broke the French defense line
and smeared north and west toward the English Channel
dividing th' French and English forces in two
Emma Goldman
had been tossed from the USA
in the Palmer Raids o' '19
& unfairly never allowed to return
except for one brief visit
She became a British citizen
& spent the last few years of her life
for the Spanish Anarchists.
She'd visited Spain a few times
loved the anarchist collectives
—the workers in control of Barcelona
but the Spanish anarchists were
caught in a hideous historical vise:
snip-snappy commies on one side
& fascists of evil on the other
till they were squeezed out of history
She died of a stroke in Toronto on May 14
and was buried in Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago
where you can pay your respects
(You can also read her interesting essays in her book Red Emma
or visit her archives in Cambridge, Massachusetts
at the Schlesinger Library by Harvard Square)
Dunkirk
May 26-June 4
The German "panzer units"
featured the Panzerkampfwagen IVD battle tank
& shoved just 15 miles away from
the French city of Dunkirk
on the coast near the Belgian border
whereupon Hitler dumkopfedly called off the advance on May 24
& ordered a 3-day rest
a much-debated "fatal error"
giving England time to organize
a massive pull-off by boat
the stuff of history, code-named Operation Dynamo.
They rounded up every ship they could find,
including ferries and small fishing boats
and on May 26 began to cross the English Channel.
The trapped soldiers came upon the Dunkirk beaches, inlets and piers
to clamber aboard
& cross back to Dover
guns firing constantly
German bombers always in the sky
243 ships and boats were lost
but 200,000 Britons were saved
& 140,000 French and Belgians
while Hitler's troops sprang forth in butcher-bash
toward Dunkirk
which fell to the [SYMBOL OMITTED] 's
in early June
Woody Guthrie at the Library of Congress
that summer the great Woody Guthrie
famous later for "This Machine Kills Fascists"
glued to his guitar
recorded with Alan Lomax
at the Library of Congress
* * *
June 5
German tank forces captured N and NW France
June 10
Mussolini declared war on Britain and France
The Fall of Paris
June 14
the Germans entered Paris
WWI hero/yet right wing nut Marshal Henri Pétain became Premier
and signed an armistice with Germany
The northern and western 3/5s of France became occupied,
with the rest of France nominally sovereign.
Pétain moved the capital south to Vichy
& the WWI hero twisted it into a fascist style dictatorship.
Killing the New Deal
Beginning around June 20
to get ready for War
Roosevelt brought into the government
a group of New Deal-haters and tsk-tskers
among them as Secretary of War Henry Stimson
73 and a pillar of the conservative Republicans
and Navy Secretary Frank Knox, publisher of the Chicago Daily News
whose ink had only derision for the New Deal
I.F. Stone called it "The New Deal Retreat"
the alliance w/big business of 1940.
Roosevelt had a strong sense of himself
as the Protector of America
I think he welcomed the role of a Fisher King
—that he could hold inside himself the contradictions
of a Great Nation
& make it flourish for the
masses
even surrounded now by those
with little but spittle for the workers.
The Smith Act
June 28
Congress passed what was called the Smith Act
which made a crime of advocating the forcible
or violent overtoss of the gov't.
All aliens in the US were to register & be fingerprinted
Fear of Germany
& fear that Commies were
causing strikes at defense plants
fueled the Smith Act
(Its conspiracy clauses were later upheld,
though somewhat liberalized
when, in '57, the Supreme Court ruled
you couldn't be sent to jail merely for
teaching communism or other revolutionary theories)
It was used first against Trotskyists, who were members
of the Socialist Workers Party
and of Teamsters Local 544 in Minneapolis
As the US prepared for W2 the Trotskyites would not desist
from trashing th' imperialist war aims of th' US
so 28 Trots were arrested in '41
(see their trial in '43)
June 28
Russia acquired Bessarabia and Bukovina from Romania
and occupied them with troops
On th' same day Britain recognized DeGaulle leader of th' Free French
DeGaulle was in England
Henry Wallace as Vice President
Vice President John Garner
had opposed Roosevelt running for a 3rd four
so Franklin dumped him
and pressured the
Democratic Convention in Chicago that July 19
to nominate the plant geneticist Henry Wallace
who used to publish the newspaper, Wallace's Farmer
Wallace had been the Secretary of Agriculture since '33
running the New Deal assistance programs
to farmers
The right wing hated him
and slowly, during the following years
formed a Get Wallace! fang-pack
The Battle of Britain
July 10-October 31
The Germans were surge-massed
on the English Channel
They were preparing an invasion called Operation Sealion
but Göring talked Hitler
into a first strike by aircraft
so the Germans with over 1,350 bombers and 1,200 fighters attacked
shipping, airfields, towns, prepping for invasion.
They called it the Battle of Britain
'tween the R.A.F. and Luftwaffe in the skies over England
The English had Ultra
(information from the deciphering of
the German radio enciphering machine)
the advantage of owning the home area
(they could salvage more planes for instance)
and very good radar
The Germans screwed up badly
by not bombing the radar stations
and the English did well in the sky war
especially in September—
so well that Hitler called off Sealion on September 17.
The Germans switched plans
and started indiscriminate bombing
of cities, especially London,
with the bigger attacks at night
On July 20
as the Nightmare Kick Drum doom-droned from Europe
the first record chart
was published in Billboard
(At the top of the charts Tommy Dorsey's "I'll Never Smile Again"
sung by Frank Sinatra)
Trotsky
In a suburb of Mexico city on August 21
Stalin's murd-minion
set his bundled coat on the table
for easy access
then pulled out an ice axe
closed his eyes
and smote Leon Trotsky on the head
The murderer recalled the scream
a long & huge & horrible scream
that never seemed to bring itself
to a final shrail, then wail, then ail, then ai
August 23
All night long
th' Naz-slime bombed London
in the form of attack known as the "Blitz"
then August 28
Britain bombed Berlin
angering the always-angry Hitler
who then attacked British population centers:
Coventry, Liverpool, London
whence children had been taken to the countryside
August
the USSR seized Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia
and implanted puppet governments in the Baltics
The Beginning of Lend-Lease
September 3
Acting on his own
without a vote of Congress
—prodded by the very very persistent Mr. Churchill—
Roosevelt handed over 50 recently reconditioned
WWI destroyers
to Britain
in exchange for rent free bases in Newfoundland and the Caribbean
for 99 years
Table of Contents
| Introduction | 9 |
| 1940 | 13 |
| 1941 | 28 |
| 1942 | 48 |
| 1943 | 74 |
| 1944 | 88 |
| 1945 | 114 |
| 1946 | 149 |
| 1947 | 161 |
| 1948 | 179 |
| 1949 | 197 |
| 1950 | 209 |
| 1951 | 228 |
| 1952 | 243 |
| 1953 | 257 |
| 1954 | 281 |
| 1955 | 302 |
| 1956 | 319 |
| 1957 | 336 |
| 1958 | 347 |
| 1959 | 361 |
| 1960 | 372 |
| 1961 | 396 |
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