City/three

Item is the third number of City, titled City/three published in 1968. The item was edited by Marilyn Hacker, with contributions by William McNeill and poet Helen Adam. The item also included Tarots by Russell FitzGerald and the production was credited to Samuel R. Delaney.
--Acclaimed science-fiction writer Samuel R. Delany and his then-wife, the poet Marilyn Hacker, were a bohemian couple who spent time in San Francisco and their native New York. Through their friendship with the FitzGeralds, sci-fi became a new arena for Russell’s interest in mysticism and surrealism to flourish. Delany commissioned him to illustrate the covers for several of his books. FitzGerald’s drawings and writing appeared in the first two issues of Delany and Hacker’s “quarterly review of speculative fiction,” QUARK/. With Hacker, FitzGerald also co-edited the small literary magazine City; issue 3 paired designs from FitzGerald’s tarot deck (see adjacent vitrines) with poems by Helen Adam (1909–1993). Adam was a Scottish balladeer beloved by the San Francisco Renaissance poets who was fascinated by the occult and whose gritty subject matter resonated with FitzGerald’s (see video in adjacent vitrine). 
-Jon Davies, 2024