William Moses Kunstler

The defense attorney in such cases as the Chicago Seven, the World Trade Center bombing, the Central Park jogger case, and the flag-burning case, William Kunstler tells his story.

Like most things William Kunstler does, the poems in this collection rattle the foundations of venerable American institutions, in this case our poetry canon and our entrenched notion that institutionalized racism is a thing of the past. His blending of high seriousness of purpose with lightheartedness of tone appears effortless and masterful. This is not ivory tower stuff. It is experience lived as fully as possible and only then recast in lyric form. Kunstler knew most of the people he writes about. A good number of those who live on in these pages had him as their only defender, some he kept out of prison, others from the electric chair.

Personal account of a lawyer's involvement in the Civil Rights movement, starting in June, 1961, depicting the working of the law south of the Mason-Dixon line.