Unbound

Aaron Shurin is the author of fourteen books of poetry and prose, most recently The Blue Absolute (Nightboat, 2020), Flowers & Sky: Two Talks (Entre Rios Books, 2017), and The Skin of Meaning: Collected Literary Essays and Talks (University of Michigan Press, 2015). His work has appeared in over forty national and international anthologies, from The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry to Italy’s Nuova Poesia Americana: San Francisco, and has been supported by grants from The National Endowment for the Arts, The California Arts Council, The San Francisco Arts Commission, and the Gerbode Foundation. A pioneer in both LGBTQ studies and innovative verse, Shurin was a member of the original Good Gay Poets collective in Boston, and later the first graduate of the storied Poetics Program at New College of California. He has written numerous critical essays about poetic theory and compositional practice, as well as personal narratives on sexual identity, gender fluidity, and the AIDS epidemic. A longtime educator, he’s the former director and currently Professor Emeritus for the MFA Writing Program at the University of San Francisco.

Preface: Rebinding UnboundA Re-introduction to Unbound: A Book of AIDS 

Full Circle: Postscript to “City of Men” 

Notes from Under 

The Depositories 

Strips and Streamers 

Further Under 

Orphée: The Kiss of Death 

Turn Around: A Solo Dance with Voice 

A Lull in the Void: Postscript to “Turn Around” 

from The Skin of Meaning: Collected Literary Essays and Talks 

Human Immune 

My Memorial 

Some Haunting 

Inscribing AIDS: A Reflexive Poetics 

Shifting Paradise 

July 

Generation 

The Dance that We Made 

Appendices: 

Preface: Binding Unbound, preface to the 2nd edition

Preface to Unbound: A Book of AIDS, preface to the Original edition 

Notes