Ed Sanders

American musician, author, and activist Ed Sanders speaks with poet Nelson Barr inside the Peace Eye bookstore on January 14, 1966. (photo by Fred W. McDarrah)

“I’ll print anything”

Poet and activist Ed Sanders grew up in Blue Springs, Missouri. He studied at the University of Missouri and New York University and earned a BA in ancient Greek. After college Sanders stayed in New York City, where he opened the Peace Eye Bookstore and started Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts. Deeply influenced by the work of Dylan Thomas, Ezra Pound, and Allen Ginsberg, Sanders helped bridge the concerns of Beat poetry and the countercultural movement of the 1960s.

As a corollary to his Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts, Ed Sanders published a variety of books and broadsides  under the Fuck You Press imprint. Sanders also employed the mimeograph machine at his Peace Eye Bookstore to print catalogs, a newsletter, and ephemera for the FUGS, the band he co-founded with Tuli Kupferberg and Ken Weaver.

The Peace Eye Bookstore was located at 383 East Tenth Street on the Lower East Side. On January 1, 1966, police raided Peace Eye Bookstore and charged Sanders with obscenity, charges he fended off with the aid of the ACLU. Notoriety generated by the case led to his appearance on the February 17, 1967 cover of Life Magazine, which proclaimed him “a leader of New York’s Other Culture.”

References Consulted:

    • Clay, Steven and Rodney Phillips. A SECRET LOCATION ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE: ADVENTURES IN WRITING, 1960-1980
      New York: New York Public Library / Granary Books, 1998
    • Marx, Jake. “Index to Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts” in THE SERIF: QUARTERLY OF THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES, Volume VIII, Number 3
      Kent: The Kent State University Libraries, September 1971
    • Sanders, Ed. FUG YOU: AN INFORMAL HISTORY OF THE PEACE EYE BOOKSTORE, THE FUCK YOU PRESS, THE FUGS, AND COUNTERCULTURE ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE
      Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2011

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