City/4

Item is the fourth number of City, titled City/4, published in 1968. Cover art is by Nemi Frost. Contributors include Marilyn Hacker, Harold Reynolds, Russell FitzGerald, and Samuel R. Delany.
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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.
-Jon Davies, 2024