This collection of poetry begins with the poet's inaugural address as Laureate of San Francisco, a sparkling essay that shows how poetry can please and empower. Strong, introspective and caring, major's poems capture the challenge and joy of being an artist, as they survey the political and social landscapes of one of America's favorite cities.

-A visionary of hope, with a heart big enough to embrace every neighborhood, street and alley in this magical and -poetical city. Here is a poet who shoots straight as Cupid's arrow. Zing Right to the heart.---Alejandro...

The fourth volume of the San Francisco Poet Laureate Series, All That's Left is a powerful collection of poems for social justice by street-poet-turned- laureate Jack Hirschman. The volume opens with Hirschman's autobiographical inaugural address, which vividly traces his career as poet, translator, and agitator.

Included are several of Hirschman's earlier poems, marking successive stages of his poetic development. The poems following the address were composed during his tenure as poet laureate, covering contemporary outrages like post-Katrina New Orleans and the Virginia Tech...

Stray Poems opens with San Francisco Poet Laureate Alejandro Murguia's inaugural address, where he provides a brilliant and impassioned poetic account of San Francisco's Native and Latino literary history. What follows is a selection of Murguia's most recent work, composed over the past twelve years. These are poems of the twenty-first century, written in a combination of English and Spanish--the patois of contemporary America. Angry, rebellious, subversive, sentimental, hip, urban, local, global.

Alejandro Murguia is the author of Southern Front and This War...