- Aaron Shurin
Aaron Shurin is an
American poet ,essayist , andeducator . Since1999 , he has co-directed theMaster of Fine Arts in Writing Program at theUniversity of San Francisco .Overview
Aaron Shurin received his M.A. in
Poetics fromNew College of California , where he studied under poet Robert Duncan. He is a recipient of California Arts Council Literary Fellowships in poetry (1989, 2002), and a NEA fellowship in creative nonfiction (1995). Shurin is the former Associate Director of the "Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives" at San Francisco State University and the author of numerous books of poetry, including: "Into Distances" (1993), "The Paradise of Forms: Selected Poems" (1999) [ which was chosen as one ofPublishers Weekly 's Best Books of 1999] , "A Door" (2000), "Involuntary Lyrics" (2005); and volumes of prose, including "Unbound: A Book ofAIDS " (1997) [a work which has been variously described as a "passionate, personal history of gay San Francisco in the late 1960s and how life in and out of the bars plotted a course to liberation beforeStonewall ".] and "King of Shadows" (2008), a collection of essays..Aaron Shurin has taught extensively in the fields of American poetry and poetics, contemporary and classical prosody, improvisational techniques in composition, and the personal essay. According to his biography at the University of San Francisco where he teaches, his own work is framed by the innovative traditions in lyric poetry as they extend the central purpose of the Romantic Imagination: to attend the world in its particularities, body and soul.
Poetics
Shurin's poetics might be described as a poetics of the voice in the tradition of
Walt Whitman ,Emily Dickinson and of those who followed. Writes Shurin: Quotation|An American inheritance might include Whitman's polyglot impetus toward people speaking in their own voices, bringing poetic diction down from England's on high and into the streets (but that's an impulse already at least as old asDante .)... An American inheritance might include Dickinson's fierce commitment to individual volition and despair, to her reworking of traditional forms to accept interruption and levels of psychic intuition. [from [http://www.poetrysociety.org/shurin.html What is American About American Poetry?] ]Following upon Whitman and Dickinson, Shurin acknowledges a multiplicity of influences on his sense of a poetics:
Resources
External links
* [http://www.poetrysociety.org/shurin.html What is American About American Poetry?] essay by Shurin at the "Poetry Society of America" website
* [http://www.lodestarquarterly.com/work/54/ "Three Scenes from the Sauna at the YMCA"] a prose poetry piece by Shurin (2002) at "Lodestar Quarterly "
* [http://www.sfsu.edu/~poetry/narrativity/issue_two/shurin.html "Narrativity"] This essay was first delivered by Shruin as a talk at "Painted Bride ", Philadelphia, June 1989.
* [http://www.speakeasy.org/~subtext//poetry/shurin/poem1.htm "Unbound: A book of AIDS"] a selection from this book on-line
* [http://home.jps.net/~nada/shurin.htm review of "The Paradise of Forms: Selected Poems"] Jeffrey Jullich on Aaron Shurin
* [http://www.epoetry.org/issues/spring01/text/cnotes/aas.html poems from "Involuntary Lyrics"] at "Electronic Poetry Review"
* [http://www.obooks.com/books/adream.htm from a review of "A's Dream"] by Steve Silberman at "Poetry Flash", January 1990. Link includes an excerpt from "A's Dream"
* [http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2005/11/very-first-page-is-so-strong-it-nearly.html "The very first page is so strong it nearly took my head off..."]Ron Silliman on "Involuntary Lyrics"
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