The Paradise of Forms: Selected Poems - Softcover

Shurin, Aaron

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1883689813 ISBN 13: 9781883689810

Publisher: Talisman House, Publishers, 1999

Synopsis

Poetry. "A poetry of lyric complexity, determined in its exploration of the 'personal' as a territory of multiple voices and multiple selves."—Michael Palmer

About this title

About the Author

Aaron Shurin is an American poet, essayist, and educator. Since 1999, he has co-directed the Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco. Aaron Shurin received his M.A. in Poetics from New 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. He is the author of over ten books, including A'S DREAM (O Books, 1999), NARRATIVITY (Sun & Moon Press, 1990), Unbound: A Book of AIDS (Sun & Moon Press, 1997), THE PARADISE OF FORMS: SELECTED POEMS (Talisman House, Publishers, 1999), A DOOR (Talisman House, Publishers, 2000), INVOLUNTARY LYRICS (Omnidawn Publishing, 2005), KING OF SHADOWS (City Lights Publishers, 2008) and CITIZEN (City Lights Publishers, 2011).

Reviews

At this point, the principal legacy of 1960s "free verse" may be a myopic identification of formalism with conservatism-as though constraint were indistinguishable from repression. Shurin's The Paradise of Forms proves just the opposite; it delightfully explores a m?lange of containers, frames, and matrices through which a poem can come to life. That these forms here take shape paradoxicallyAthrough breakage, shock, glissementAmakes them no less "prosodic" or constructive. From the disjunctive lyric of Shurin's "Parallel Views" (The Graces, 1983), the work grows increasingly tactical, refracted and serial, advancing from interior depths to syntactic horizons: "Wasp of benevolent diction in contention with cars, a narrow pole deep into the North dug with cautious abandon." By "Codex," typographical dissonance directs the poem back into the surface of the page: "Agog before the remainder a choked overture, HE TRIES TO PULL THE SKIN FROM ITS INCISIVE GRASP, 'he fumbled and gaped.' " Later work, such as Into Distances (1993), clusters prose paragraphs into arch parables or demi-essays, after which (in "Involuntary Lyrics") Shurin returns to verse. Pattern, recombination, and a kind of lovely noiseAlike teletype from the collective unconsciousAmark the musical structures of these books of forms.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Talisman House, Publishers
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1883689813
• ISBN 13: 9781883689810
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 142