Cutty, One Rock (2004)

In Cutty, One Rock's nine wry, off-kilter essays, San Francisco poet August Kleinzahler recalls his 1950s New Jersey childhood, riding the bus in San Diego, the unique pleasure of watching ''a good-looking young woman eat,'' and, movingly, his older brother's suicide. Casually erudite and self-deprecating (''I myself resemble a dissipated accountant who worked some years as a hod carrier in his youth''), Kleinzahler is at his best writing about boozy eccentrics and gritty street life. His dry, lovely tribute to an old San Francisco bar ranks with Joseph Mitchell's classic McSorley's Wonderful Saloon.