This isn't the poetry they made you read in high school—no flowery descriptions, no scientifically-created metaphors, no mathematical meter. The poems in Rusty String Quartet are urgent, quick and brutal—poems that had to be written.

The book reads like a novel composed in mercilessly focused bursts chronicling the madness, beauty, and suffering that we all battle with. The story picks up where Raegan's first book, Stone Hotel, left off: he is released from prison and finds a world drastically changed from the one he left seven years before—but some things remain the same. His tale is one of joy, loss, bitter realizations, heartbreak, and desperation.

His world-worn cynicism is coated in the blackest of humor and provides an excellent counter-point to the sometimes boundless optimism of other CrimethInc. writings. These poems are studies in survival, written in blood and sweat.

Rusty String Quartet is 264 poems in 340 pages, wrapped with a hand-printed, letter-pressed cover and endsheets in this first edition of 2,000 copies. This finely-printed tome is the fourth book in the CrimethInc. Letters Series.

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Author Bio

Raegan Butcher was born in Seattle in 1969 but moved to rural Snohomish when he was very young. In 1996 he was convicted of 1st degree armed robbery and spent 7 years in prison. He was released on March 17th 2003. He currently lives in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Rusty String Quartet is his second full book of poetry, his first, Stone Hotel, was published by CrimethInc. in 2003.

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A full PDF of Butcher's first book,
Stone Hotel, can be downloaded here.
Give it a try.

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