Edward Sanders and Investigative Poetry
Michael Simmons writes in the Huffington Post about Susan Cowsill’s contribution to New York Times BEST POETRY CD OF 2007.
“Edward Sanders' Poems For New Orleans has been called is one of the great American epic poems, on par with Whitman and Ginsberg. The New York Times' about.com website named the recording The Best Poetry CD Of 2007, saying: ‘Sanders utilizes his Investigative Poetry techniques and aesthetic to give the full backstory to the unbearable tragedy still in progress in New Orleans.’
“He read and recorded his history of the Crescent City and Hurricane Katrina with musical accompaniment over four months in 2007 and has released it on Paris Records, a label on which proprietor Michael Minzer has also released spoken word by Ginsberg, Kathy Acker, Robert Creeley and a collab twixt Corso and Marianne Faithfull. (It's also available from Amazon.)
“A most powerful poem on this set is ‘Unearned Suffering,’ a spoken word duet with Susan Cowsill. It's a chilling, stark paean to those ‘born with anvils on their souls,’ the collaterally damaged of child labor, dangerous work, and those who make ‘the calm life glow for a few.’ The piece ends with a comparison of Hurricane Katrina to ‘unearned suffering worthy of the days of Poseidon.’ He then invokes the spirits of composer Charles Ives and poet Wallace Stevens, both of whom had been in the insurance racket (who knew?), and begs them to use their heavenly power to intercede on behalf of the storm's swindled victims.”
