Ed Sanders, America’s Bard Returns to Gloucester
April 16, 2025
By Bing McGilvray
“A Glyph is a drawing that is charged with literary, emotional, historical or mythic and poetic intensity.” —Ed Sanders
On April 25 Ed Sanders will be performing at the Gloucester House in a benefit for the Gloucester Writers Center. Yet when I excitedly inform friends of this event I’m asked, “Who’s Ed Sanders?” Unfortunately, at age 85, after an extraordinary career, he remains under the radar for most people. As he sings with his band The Fugs in a recent song, “The Fugs will never be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame … and we don’t give a Fug.” May this succinct bio acquaint those of you not in the know with the life and work of Edward Sanders.
PEACE EYE AND THE FUGS
In 1958 Ed Sanders, a young man from Missouri, hitchhiked to New York City to attend NYU where he studied Greek and Latin, became fascinated by hieroglyphics, and met an art student, Miriam Kittell, the love of his life. They soon married and the two have remained steadfastly together to this day. Ed began making his own signature glyphs which he has incorporated into his poetry and prose ever since. Miriam and Ed moved to the East Side of Greenwich Village which back then was hardly a desirable place to live. However, the run down, often abandoned buildings, home to ethnic groups and others on the lowest rung of the income ladder, was an oasis for thousands of impecunious but highly creative youths seeking to escape the stuffy confines of corporate, conservative Eisenhower America.
In short order Ed founded the seminal avant-garde rock band The Fugs with fellow poet Tuli Kupferberg. He opened the Peace Eye Bookstore which immediately became the bustling hub of wild counterculture activity, attracting writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and fun seekers while bridging the gap between the Beat era and the burgeoning hippie movement. From the Peace Eye he published his mimeographed pamphlet Fuck You, a magazine of the arts, a very punk enterprise a decade before Ed himself coined the term ‘punk rock’. It was sold in the store and sent out to subscribers via the US Post Office. This little unassuming ‘zine published a very impressive list of Beats and contemporaries including Ginsberg, Olson, Ferlinghetti, Burroughs, DiPrima, O’Hara, Brainard, Berrigan, LeRoi Jones and even Gloucester’s poet laureate Vincent Ferrini. Lifelong friendships were formed with all of them. Usually, one of Ed’s glyphs adorned the cover of F.U. but Andy Warhol did one and also made banners for the opening of the Peace Eye.
On New Year’s Day 1966, the NYPD raided the Peace Eye, confiscated the printing press and the unsold magazines, trashed the store and arrested Ed for sending obscene material through the mail. He did a stint in jail and the trial dragged on over a year. All the literary heavy hitters rose to his defense. So, Sanders did what any poet would do in this situation. He wrote his first book Poem from Jail. The tumultuous 60s were underway and Ed Sanders was at the anti-establishment center of it. Ed ended up on the cover of LIFE magazine. He continued to publish F.U. ‘from a secret location’ and today Sotheby’s sells a complete collection of every issue for $45,000.
Throughout the decade Ed happily collaborated on many acts of political theater. Once he and filmmaker Shirley Clarke attempted to levitate the Pentagon with a group of like-minded radicals. The motivation was serious, but fun was always a major part of the equation. Laugher is the best medicine. Gradually though reality got darker.
THE FAMILY
As the 60s roared on, the American scene turned more ominous and deadly. The Vietnam War escalated, and harder drugs entered the East Village. Life there became dangerous. 1968 was a watershed year. The assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King shocked the world. Ed and his mentor Allen Ginsberg headed to Chicago to protest at the Democratic Convention along with throngs of young people from across the country. There they met with a violent overreaction by the Chicago Police under the brutal direction of Mayor Richard Daley. It was bloody and televised. Many anarchists in the freedom and civil rights movements began to advocate violence in retaliation. An eye for an eye was not the way of the Peace Eye.
The Sanders now had a daughter to raise, and they found a relatively safer neighborhood a little farther away, relocating to the fringe of the West Village. The Peace Eye reopened on Avenue A. The move did nothing to curtail Ed's spirit of protest and resistance but running a bookstore, the surge in Fugs’ popularity and the duty to his family were becoming too overwhelming to juggle. Eventually The Fugs took a break, and the Peace Eye closed its doors. He wasn’t slowing down, just reorganizing his priorities.
Ed recorded a solo album Sanders Truck Stop and in 1969 was on his way to Los Angeles to discuss a promo tour with his record label when he first heard that a cult of satanic hippies led by one Charles Manson was somehow involved with the murders of Sharon Tate and some friends at the Hollywood home she shared with newlywed husband Roman Polanski. An underground newspaper, the LA Free Press, hired him to write a series of articles on this shocking true crime story that had everyone riveted to the news.
In the process Ed became engaged with the other side of the justice system. He worked side by side with law enforcement, developed close relationship with several detectives and gained newfound respect for hard working, dedicated police officers. Up close and personal he discovered there was an evil underside to the ‘flower children’. By his own admission, this is when Ed ‘grew up’. He has never given up on the story. His definitive book on the murders, The Family, first published in 1971 has gone through several updates over the years and a follow up book, Sharon Tate, was published in 2011. He had earned his chops as a serious journalist. An inexhaustible investigator, Sanders often put his life in danger to thoroughly research the story and search for the truth. Investigative Poetry, his influential treatise, first published in 1976, is a blueprint on how it was done and provides a path forward for the future of poetry.
Above is merely the briefest sketch of Ed Sanders formative era. 50 more incredible years have followed and there’s no space here to cover them all. I encourage the curious to choose among the many titles illustrated above and investigate for yourself. The breadth of his talent and accomplishments will astonish you. Prolific is an understatement. “Investigate the abyss” Sanders once said, and that he did. In totality though, the sum of Ed’s output – poems, books, music, performances, lectures – has been relentlessly upbeat and full of optimist humor. He gets the sublime absurdity of life.
OF OLSON, GLYPHS AND GLOUCESTER
Along with Allen Ginsberg, Charles Olson was the other great mentor to Ed Sanders. Early in the 60s Charles contributed three Maximus poems to F.U. Thus began a close friendship that lasted until Olson’s death in 1970. Ed traveled to Gloucester many times to visit Charles and has a few hilarious tales about those adventures. There was a time when Ed considered buying a house in Gloucester, but the Sanders settled in Woodstock, NY instead. Our loss. To think we could have had an alternative newspaper like the Woodstock Journal.
On February 1 of this year, I went to meet with Henry Ferrini, director of the Gloucester Writers Center. Laid out before me was a treasure trove of glyphs Ed had generously donated in the past few years. Henry said Ed and Miriam were coming to town on April 25 and he has offered to do a performance and help sell some glyphs to raise money for the GWC. He asked if I wanted to spearhead the project. Like Olson was to Ed, Sanders is one of my great heroes, so I said yes. There was very little time and an enormous amount of work to do. I dove in headfirst.
Ann Molloy of Neptunes Harvest and Chris Munkholm of Cape Ann COSMOS quickly signed on as co-sponsors. Ann helped secure the Gloucester House as the venue. Chris’ magic for getting a crowd out and spreading the word is unparalleled. Tickets began selling briskly. Henry’s dynamic duo at the Writers Center, Owen Ferrini (son of Vincent) and Lucas Olson (no relation to Charles) set to work framing the original glyphs.
Personally, I had a daunting dilemma. What to do with an overwhelming stack of glyphs that I’d never laid eyes on? Some were originals, most were copies, the majority had never been published. I immediately thought they would make a wonderful book. Two and a half months of intense labor has resulted in A Box of Glyphs for Gloucester containing a unique folio 100 Glyphs for Gloucester, in a limited edition of twenty boxes. Also included in the box is a signed copy of Ed Sanders’ A Life of Olson and an original glyph. The boxes and the framed originals will be sold on April 25 at the Gloucester House to benefit the work of the Writers Center now celebrating its 15th anniversary. It's been a real joy immersing myself in these glyphs.
Ed recently told me he rarely performs in public now, but he made an exception for Gloucester and the Writers Center as he has done so often in the past. In the years since that first visit to Charles’ tiny Fort Square apartment, he has grown to love this great polis. Miriam too.
Please join us April 25th at 7pm, at the Gloucester House for Ed Sanders in Gloucester. It’s sure to be a very special, entertaining, and unforgettable evening. A Love-In, you might say.
For tickets: https://givebutter.com/c/wil6Xw
Who’s Ed Sanders? Unfortunately, at age 85, after an extraordinary career, he remains under the radar for most people. As he sings with his band The Fugs in a recent song, ‘The Fugs will never …