Thirty Years of Provocative Writing

In The Skin of Meaning, Aaron Shurin has collected thirty years’ worth of his provocative essays. Fueled by gender and queer studies and combined with radical traditions in poetry, Shurin’s essays combine a highly personal and lyrical vision with a trenchant social analysis of poetry’s possibilities.

“Reading these essays I’m struck by how fully Aaron Shurin combines a personal history with a prophetic, conceptual, strongly non-personal vision….His writing about AIDS, brilliantly gathered here—rich, fantastic, and steely-eyed—encompasses the functions of a great novel: total immersion into a mysterious eco-political world.” --Kevin Killian

Aaron Shurin is Professor Emeritus and former Director of the MFA program at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Citizen, King of Shadows, and Involuntary Lyrics. His honors and awards include the Gertrude Stein Award, the Bay Area Art Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council.