Just a reminder that you can read a feature excerpt from Sanders's
forthcoming RFK book at Dispatches, under the poetry section this month.
>>> Pierre Joris <[log in to unmask]> 08/29/16 5:48 AM >>>
Ed Sanders, Author Of Manson Family Biography, To Sell Massive Archive
August 28, 20168:57 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday
JON KALISH
Sanders wrote the definitive book on the Manson Family ("The Family.")
He's currently working on a book about Robert Kennedy. He's decided to
sell the assembled work on which he's based his research.
LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:
Ed Sanders is a kind of godfather scholar of the 1960s counterculture.
He wrote the definitive book on the Manson family. He co-founded the
rock band The Fugs. And his latest project is a book about Robert
Kennedy. Now he's selling the massive archive of files he built over
half a century to tell his stories. Jon Kalish visited Sanders at home
in Woodstock, N.Y., and reports that the 76-year-old poet, musician and
scholar has decided it's time to start thinking about retirement.
JON KALISH, BYLINE: Ed Sanders' archive fills 400 banker's boxes.
ED SANDERS: I have files on many things. I'm a compulsive filemaker.
KALISH: He could pass for a college professor with his bushy mustache
and tweed jacket, sporting a button for Bernie Sanders - no relation.
SANDERS: This is a garage, which is packed floor to ceiling with my
chronological archives.
KALISH: He's got them organized by date and subject, all carefully
catalogued in a 200-page single-spaced directory. Attached to the garage
is a small building that used to be his writing studio until it, too,
filled up with boxes. Sanders opens one of them and pulls out a record
of him performing a poem.
(SOUNDBITE OF POEM, "YIDDISH SPEAKING SOCIALISTS OF THE LOWER EAST
SIDE")
UNIDENTIFIED MEN: (Singing) They were the Yiddish-speaking socialists of
the Lower East Side.
SANDERS: You could send one of these to Bernie Sanders.
(SOUNDBITE OF POEM, "YIDDISH SPEAKING SOCIALISTS OF THE LOWER EAST
SIDE")
UNIDENTIFIED MEN: (Singing) La, la, la, la, la, la, la...
KALISH: Three sheds on his property hold even more. None of them are
climate controlled. One of the sheds contains 18 boxes filled with
files, photographs and memorabilia Sanders accumulated while researching
the Manson family.
SANDERS: Files and files and files and files.
KALISH: Manhattan publisher Steve Clay is handling the sale of Sanders'
archive.
STEVE CLAY: I see Ed's archive as one of the great '60s archives out
there. I love this one. This is a flyer. Protest against the rudeness,
brusqueness, crudeness and violence of narcotics agents, a benefit
featuring underground movies plus The Fugs
KALISH: The Fugs were Sanders' long-running band, and he's got their
recordings archived too.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YODELING YIPPIE")
THE FUGS: (Singing) Well, I ride the left wing airlines, stirring up
trouble at night, secret signs and secret deeds, I'm just a yodeling
yippie.
KALISH: The band got its start playing at concerts and protests
throughout the 1960s. That's also when he ran the Peace Eye Bookstore
and became involved in First Amendment battles over obscenity.
KEN LOPEZ: Ed Sanders in particular was kind of right in the middle of a
lot of that.
KALISH: Ken Lopez is a dealer who's handled the sales of archives
belonging to writers William Burroughs and Robert Stone. He says
Sanders' papers cover a crucial period in American history.
LOPEZ: Culturally and historically and literarily, this sheds a lot of
light on important changes that were taking place. It definitely would
be an archive with great scholarly value.
KALISH: Not to mention monetary. Estimates for the archive range from
the low six figures to a million dollars or more. Sitting in his house,
Sanders says the archive has become a part of his life.
SANDERS: I like my archive. It's a living thing. It's like a life form.
It's like a big mushroom out there.
KALISH: The archive, of course, will stop
growing once Ed Sanders sells
ion to some for a book-length poem about Robert F. Kennedy and for his
unfinished multi-volume autobiography. For NPR News, I'm Jon Kalish in
New York.
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On Aug 27, 2016, at 9:21 PM, Kent Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
Of course, the interesting question is, Why should an email be worth
less money than a holograph letter or a typewriter-composed one?
If an email by J.H. Prynne, let's say--first name that pops into my head
for a living Brit poet--that's been unseen by anyone save its recipient,
contains more valuable information than a handwritten letter by same
Prynne, why should the latter be judged to have more monetary worth than
the former?
And what about toenails, actually? What if someone were to find, who
knows where, but let's say somewhere ten of them appear in a vial, his
own handwriting on the receptacle, with date, authenticating them: The
toenails of William Wordsworth.
How much would the Bodleian pay for them? It would surely pay at least
ten times what it paid for Wendy Cope's emails!
Don't throw anything away, poets.
>>> Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]> 08/27/16 7:14 PM >>>
Strewth. I have some old toenails for sale plus an elbow patch once worn
by the bard Algernon.
On 28 Aug 2016, at 00:41, Kent Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
Here's that article on the poet-email purchase. It was for 40K emails in
Wendy Cope's files. The amount was not as substantial as I'd remembered.
But 32 thousand pounds ain't bad. In dollars, that's over a buck per
email. Though I know the pound has dropped since Brexit, so maybe not
quite that. Still, though...
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/british-library-buys-poets-40000-emails-2270077.html
>>> <[log in to unmask]> 08/27/16 6:27 PM >>>
I'm more of book person than a ms. person. So I was very impressed a
number of years ago (10 now probably) when it was reported that 2 and a
half tractor-trailer loads of poetry books (including many rare and
first editions) were delivered to the Emory Library...courtesy of
Raymond Danowski:
https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/danowskipoetrylibrary/danowski-biography/
I'm glad such places exist. I hope people in a hundred years still care
about books. I imagine if I rolled up to my local library with just
small panel van filled with poetry books, they'd probably turn me away.
Not interested, they'd say...we're reducing shelf space and expanding
our digital media lab.
I tried to get into the Emory Library poetry and ms. collection last
fall when on a biz trip to Atlanta. But after making my way to top of
the library, I was met with signs that it was closed for renovation and
improvement. The guard who checked me in at library's door didn't seem
to know that the top floors were closed off for renovations. Maybe next
time I'll be luckier.
Finnegan
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2016 18:38:19 -0400
From: Pierre Joris <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Have any of you prepared for posthumous recognition?
Quote found on Emory U library (Heany & Rushdie papers among many
others):
"Early to the Feast : The Archival Education of Undergraduates: I would
guess that 99 percent of undergraduates in U.S., U.K., and European
universities never darken the doors of their special collections
library. Indeed, if they even know the location of such uninviting
rooms, they may look upon them from the outside as alien
inner sanctums
inhabited by aold professors—a view inimitably universalized for them by Yeats: “All
shuffle there; all cough in ink; / All wear the carpet with their shoes.”
“
As news of Emory’s acquisition of the Salman Rushdie archive spread,
the Director of Emory’s Special Collections received the following note
of congratulations from Seamus Heaney, another writer whose papers are
also in Emory’s Manuscript, Archives & Rare Book Library: “When John
Keats compared a stack of books to a garnering of ‘the full ripened
grain,’ he could have been thinking of Emory’s Manuscript, Archives &
Rare Book Library. This is one of the world’s most important
word-hoards, and the acquisition of Salman Rushdie’s papers—the
gleanings of yet another ‘teeming brain’—is further cause for rejoicing
in the work being done here and the work that will be done by scholars
and writers in the future.”
____________________________________________
The poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan
____________________________________________
Pierre Joris cell (USA): 518 225 7123
cell (EUR): 06 42 18 58 95
email: [log in to unmask]
Nomadics blog: http://pierrejoris.com/blog/
amazon.com/author/pierrejoris
____________________________________________
