by Jon Moskin
I wanted to be a poet to rectify the wrongs exemplified by me. My giant cowlick, like a whisk of meringue, my misshapen shoes and necrotic toe, the lies I told to break a date with you, oh the black heart of me. – Aaron Shurin, A Beneficent Light
By 2024, Aaron Shurin had become a global literary voice, his work leaving a lasting imprint on both literary form and cultural discourse. He has written 13 books of poetry and prose that have been translated into eight languages: French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Romanian, Slovenian, Ukrainian, and Greek. He has enjoyed a thoroughly impactful career as a teacher, administrator, and professor at several elite universities. And he participated in many of the most culturally (or counter-culturally) defining events including The Human Be-In where Timothy Leary first encouraged us to, “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” and the subsequent Summer of Love, where he encountered Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin and countless other luminaries that helped “reinvent” San Francisco, into, well, San Francisco.
As a writer and activist, he has been a pioneer in LGBTQ+ studies and an innovative, singular voice in multidimensional verse. He has lived a productive and prolific life — one of impact, insight, and continual reinvention. But even for someone who had navigated revolution and renaissance, aging brought its own set of challenges, and the once boundless world began to shrink within the walls of home.
“I was living in a 4th floor walkup, and some of my dear friends felt I was in danger of falling,” Aaron said. “So, they took over and helped move me into the Frank Residences, lock, stock and barrel. And I am incredibly grateful to them because I now have a beautiful apartment that’s large and bright. It’s just fantastic. I’ve met some lovely people, and I’ve been able to work.”
Indeed, he has worked arduously and with “great intensity” from the moment he arrived at the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living about a year and a half ago. And as he approaches his 78th birthday, he has just published book number 14: “Elixer: New & Selected Poems.”
“It’s a big book that starts, interestingly enough, with my newest work and goes back to the beginning,” Aaron said. “It covers 50 years of writing poetry. So, it is many books in one.
Of course, with a work of such sweep, there is no easy answer to the question: what is it about?
“I can’t isolate any one topic because the top topics change, though certainly gender and queerness are always present in my poetry, even if they’re only part of my technique. But the poetry gets more experimental as it goes on, and it searches for ways of meaning.”
Aaron’s own search for meaning and, as he puts it, “the articulated unknown”, continues unabated at the Frank Residences, where he can often be seen deep in thought, working or “refining” at various locations around the campus from his apartment to the dining rooms and gardens that color the shared space.
He is grateful and revitalized in his new home on the SFCJL, and accordingly, he will be expressing his gratitude with a book signing and reading here on the campus.
