Elixir

A new and selected collection of poetry from a legend of San Franciscos literary community. From the early days of Gay Liberation to innovations in contemporary verse, Aaron Shurins has been a singular voice in American poetry. His work has unwaveringly maintained lyric presence while at the same time utilizing narrative tensions and structural constraintsespecially in his chosen form of the prose poem. His queer eye has never waveredyet his has never been a poetry confined to one audience, one mode. Elixir draws from a dozen books over a period of fifty years, presciently investigating issues of gender, homosexuality, identity, and subjectivity, via ecstatic diction, luxurious sound-scape, creative grammar, and radical form.