as our new release of the week: The Addison Street Anthology: Berkeley’s Poetry Walk. Edited by Robert Hass and Jessica Fisher (Heyday Books). As a way of celebrating its literary and artisitic history, the city of Berkeley called on former poet laureate Robert Hass and artist David Goines to design a series of poetry panels for the sidewalks of Berkeley’s downtown arts district. The Berkeley Poetry Walk — 126 individually-crafted porcelain enamel and cast iron poetry tiles — was created on Addison Street in 2003. And now Heyday Books has now collected these poems, translations of poems, and song lyrics in a new anthology. Contributors include Maxine Hong Kingston, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsburg, Michael McClure, Joshua Clover, Jack Foley, Ina Coolbrith, Kenneth Rexroth, Czeslaw Milosz, Robert Pinsky, Lyn Hejinian, Lucille Lang Day and many others.

“Most of the poems were written by poets who were either born in the East Bay or lived or worked here for an important part of their lives,” Hass notes in the introduction. “A few poets — like Robinson Jeffers of Carmel and George Oppen of San Francisco — are here because they have been so important to the development of poetry in California that they needed to be included to fill out the picture. A few poets just passed through, but their passing left a mark, and it is an aspect of the place that many gifted writers work here for a time, and the editors wanted to reflect that, too.” Book royalties will help maintain the poetry walk.