The second installment of the City Lights Spotlight poetry series, Free Cell is the latest collection from Anselm Berrigan, one of the most significant American poets under 40. Consisting of two exper
A long-awaited collection from a pioneer of the spoken word movement, these poems soar and sway with the syncopation and melodies of jazz. Portraits, chronicles, incantations and invocations, drawn fr
Chapter OneTHE BAREFOOT MAN... AND YET I'D swear that the position was the same-I think I've always slept this way, with my right arm underneath the pillow and my body turned slightly over onto that s
Inspired by the pre-Hispanic codices that escaped immolation during colonial invasions, this artists' book opens out in accordion folds expanding to a length of over 21 feet. Rice has created a series
In this collection of short stories, Dovid Bergelson captures life in Berlin at the precarious moment between world wars - in particular the experiences of Berlin's Jewish community and the uneasy exi
In January 1953, William S. Burroughs began a seven month expedition into the jungles of South America, ostensibly to find yage, the fabled hallucinogen of the Amazon. But Burroughs also cast his ant
This anthology by former members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) captures the history and spirit of the revolutionary time just after Stonewall, when thousands came out of the closet to claim their
Like all the great religions Voudou has an external, public practice of rituals and ceremonies?and also an internal, mystical dimension. Before Nan Domi, works about Voudou have concentrated on the sp
Isabelle Eberhardt dreamed of escaping the gloom of Europe, and when she was nineteen she realized her desire in North Africa—Dar el Islam. In 1904, when she died in a flash flood in the Sahara, she w
Mushfik is a young man growing up in Turkey, first in Sarikum, a small coastal village, and later in urban Istanbul. He comes of age in an atmosphere of sublimated, disoriented eroticism, his impulses
Allen Ginsberg was a serious shutterbug who delighted in taking candid snapshots of friends and fellow writers, but up until now readers have had little chance to consider the "poetic" world of his ph
These are four tales of contemporary life in a land where cannabis, rather than alcohol, customarily provides a way out of the phenomenological world. Thus, of the men in these stories, Salam uses sug
A new collection from the author of the San Francisco Chronicle series "All Over Coffee" captures cityscapes in pen and ink drawings in a visual exploration of place and memory.
Since his post-9/11 essay “The Emergency,” Andrew Joron has been regarded as one of American poetry’s most profound practitioners. Trance Archive draws on over twenty years of Joron’s work, from his e
Essays on how history’s victors distort and suppress the documentary record in order to perpetuate their power and privilege, and how historians are influenced by the professional and class environmen
The gorgeous black and white line art inside this hefty little book instantly caught my eye. These linocut drawings were not the regular loteria images. They were modern adaptations, made with painsta
“Sycamore kicks mainstream literature in the teeth.”—The San Francisco Bay GuardianMattilda Bernstein Sycamore's exhilarating new novel is about struggling to find hope in the ruins of everyday San Fr
Anthropological evidence has long suggested that psychedelic plants have played important roles in indigenous communities for thousands of years, but most scholarship does not address their formative
This collection of 35 essays by leftist historian and political activist Zinn (emeritus, Boston U.) touches upon themes that will be familiar to fans of his People's History of the United States and o
Wafaa Bilal's childhood in Iraq was defined by the horrific rule of Saddam Hussein, two wars, a bloody uprising, and time spent as a young adult interned in chaotic refugee camps in Kuwait and Saudi
