1968 [Paperback]

Edward Sanders (Author), Ed Sanders (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"... this is the '68 / whose pulses still surge / in my psyche," writes author Edward Sanders. What he's done with that surge is to take memoir, anecdote, and factual research, and fashion them into an epic, book-length poem about 1968. Going in mostly chronological order, the book--and the year--play like a Greek tragedy. Indeed, we know the shots are coming, the riots, even Nixon. There are missed chances, wrong turns, broken hearts. This is an unexpectedly powerful and moving book, written history at its best.

Review

1968
The Book Boat
Chant To Posters
Cia Chaos
The Cia's Operation Resistance
Columbia (1)
Columbia (2)
Cuban Terror
Diggers Grrr-ing At Yippies - & Mayor Daley Shaking His Fist
The Fall Olympics
Fbi Memo On Techniques To Disrupt The New Left
Fbi Seeks Depravo Data
Firing Line
Garden Plot
A Good Stable Band
Government
Hymn To Avenue A In The Spring Of '68
The Law Commune
Liberte Egalite Fraternite
Lsd And The '68 Rev's
Millions Of Hands
Monday August 26
A Night Of Truth
The Ostracized Elf
The Peace Eye Bookstore
Pigasus
The Poor People's March
Possible Career Mistake
Prolegomenon
Robo
Robo By May
Satellites Above The Park?
Saturday August 24
The Secret Police Go Against The Funding Of The Underground Press
Seed Syllables From O
The Shove Of Bacchus
Summer On A
Sunday August 25 The Festival Of Life Begins & The Democratic
That Thing Called Yip-in
Trying To Finish An Album
Tuesday August 27
Warhol
Wednesday August 28
'where's The Depravo Data?' Part Iii
Year Of Fear
Yeats In The Gas
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Black Sparrow Press (June 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1574230379
• ISBN-13: 978-1574230376
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,217,639 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most tumultous year on paper in poetry and pictures, October 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: 1968 (Paperback)

What a great book! Almost as good as Tales! The way it's all written, and the pictures he draws along with them, and all the emotion and experience were shoved into this book, mking for a great read. I DEFINITELY recommend this for anyone trying to find a concise and well written book about the hippes, yippies, Abbie, Ed, Jerry, Fugs, or anything else that went down during that great year. He writes about the Chicago and the Democratic Convention superbly!

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Doesn't Make it as Poetry or History, January 31, 2007

By 

Lescaret (Lemonstar, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 1968 (Paperback)

I respect Ed Sanders, if for no other reason than Allen Ginsberg respected him. The concept of "Investigative Poetry" (which Sanders pioneered) is fascinating and worthwhile. That being said, this book is simply bad poetry and bad history.

What do I mean by "bad history"? I mean that this is slapdash, first-person recollection history with a minimum of cited sources. At least it makes no pretense to being a thorough history. At times it reads more like a Fugs concert chronology ("We played three nights here .... we went up to Seattle and did two gigs...", etc.). Now, had Sanders entitled it "A Fugs Eye View of 1968", we would have a more accurate volume.

"Bad poetry"? Let's face it, simply breaking up prose sentences into verse does not transform them into poetry. Throughout this work, the language is blase, trite, banal. Where's the freaking zest that characterized the very people and events this 'verse' explores?? Missing in action. This is the worst kind of boring, lifeless language, it comes nowhere near conveying this most explosive of years, and that's a real shame. Some will object to that assessment and label this work "accessible". Bollocks. It's simply mundane.

1968, and all the extraordinary people and tragic events that encapsulated the year, deserve so much more than Sanders manages to stitch together. Thankfully, we can always turn to a far better work; "1968: The Year That Rocked the World" by Mark Kurlansky. Now THAT'S history (and damn more poetic, as well).