Poems for New Orleans

by Edward Sanders

Published by North Atlantic Books, August 2008

The indomitable spirit of the people of New Orleans is the focus of this powerful suite of poems by counterculture icon Edward Sanders. The book begins with a series of vivid evocations of key events and personalities in the city’s history, then brings this colorful legacy into the present with the harrowing force of Hurricane Katrina. That natural catastrophe, worsened by human factors, is explored as a watershed demonstration of the sociopolitical fissures underlying modern America. Although the still-unfinished tragedy of Katrina suffuses Poems for New Orleans, human resilience in the face of adversity is its ultimate subject. Here is a New Orleans only glimpsed by the outside world, a place whose creativity, humor, and triumphant spirit no tragedy can overcome.

About Edward Sanders

Edward Sanders

Edward Sanders is a poet, historian, and composer. His manifesto Investigative Poetry, inspired by the work of Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, and W. C. Williams's Paterson, has informed a number of his books of poetry, most recently Poems for New Orleans. During Sanders's career he has received a Guggenheim fellowship in poetry, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in verse, an American Book Award for his collected poems, and other awards. Sanders was the founder of the satiric folk-rock group, The Fugs, which has released numerous albums and CDs during its 44-year history. He lives with his wife, the essayist and painter Miriam Sanders, in Woodstock, New York, where both are active in environmental and other social issues.