For the West Coast and particularly that Southern California colony called Venice West, Stuart Z. Perkoff was one of the most respected,if too-little-known, poets of the Beat era. His readings are recalled with almost religious enthusiasm by survivors of the Venice scene. Perkoff's various addictions, from books to heroin, remain legend among friends and acquaintances for their intensity. Even for some personalities in the entertainment industry of the period--Perkoff appeared on the Groucho Marx and Steve Allen shows--Perkoff was the quintessential Beat poet. Almost as notorious among his friends and admirers were stories about the great number of unpublished poems that vanished during Perkoff's rather erratic career. Testimonies abound as to work lost in countless moves from pad to pad, several arrests and confiscations of property, numerous untaped improvisations to jazz, and the many enraptured readings which departed from the written page. In retrospect, it seems ironic...