Brett Rutherford: City Limits

Another long-out-of-print early book by Brett Rutherford, this chapbook's title poem is a nine-part cathartic recollection of the author's calamitous last days in San Francisco in 1967, culminating in a police riot on Halloween night. During his first two years in New York City, this poem-in-progress was Rutherford's most-performed work at readings. Still reflecting the influence of Whitman and Ginsberg, these poems now count as "juvenilia," but here they are, warts and all. We all start somewhere.