America: A History in Verse: Volume 1 1900-1939

America's 20th century written as an Olsonian open-field epic poem makes for Sanders's most ambitious work to date, spilling forth its first four decades with shudders of investigative glee. Casually dismantling the position of historian as objective authority, Sanders takes the reader year by year through America's tumultuous passage into industrialization, focusing on the efforts of the country's spirited, fragmented left-wing to bring forth measures of democratic equality and justice in the face of ever-present labor abuses. Sanders, who has spent years working on a journalistic method of poetry-as-history (Chekhov; 1968: A History in Verse), here manages effortless precision and tonal confidence, all the while maintaining a radical perspective: ""April 21/ air ace Manfred von Richthofen/ was shot down/ June/ `Share or die' the Bolsheviks shouted/ as they ordered the nationalization of industry/ and shudders zoomed through the board rooms of Wall Street/ Tremble, o Greed heads, tremble"" (""1918""). The snappy, episodic structure of the book makes it highly accessible without sacrificing detail or smarts, and Sanders's irreverent humor manages to lend credibility to his defiantly liberal historic framing: ""The Progressives supported suffrage/ while wince-minded Wilson/ would not come out for it!/ feeling it was an issue for the states!/ --Racism and women's rights/ not visited at all by/ the whitebread campaign o' '12."" Sanders's plainspoken poetry will no doubt dismay the right-leaning, as well as lefties who equate radicalism with formal difficulty. But in its exactness, spirited stand-taking and expansive vision, his verse history proves a remarkable achievement. (Apr.)