Richard Siken

What is *THIS*? A poetry collection that I loved to bits and clutched to my chest? If you've been following my thread for a long time, you know that I don't generally get on terribly well with poetry, but this one, man. It is so good, and so heartbreaking, and so, like, beautifully, unbearably *attentive* to detail and nuance of moment and emotion. Just. Read it. But, be aware, it will wreck you.

Siken continues, from Crush, his habit of obsessive repetition and variation of certain themes, different ones here: war, painting, the reasons (if any) to create painting, the boundaries of the body, violating those boundaries (cutting off one’s own head). Maybe that repetition/variation is what makes him so attractive to fan creators? I don’t know what identity he’s using to write BBC Sherlock fanfic, but I still like the rhythm of his poems. My favorite line: “I’ve seen your show more true face: the back/of your head.” Crush is more my favorite for its violent Americana—here Siken moves from individualized violence to the violence of warring armies: landscape strewn with dead bodies, landscape that swallows up any individual. show less

Poetry should be like a mortal wound. Painful, messy, and ultimately fatal.

Siken's writing is raw, like gnawing on a torn-off limb is raw. Every piece in this collection feels a little like a first draft, too. Not in the way that it feels unfinished, or messy, or like it needs polish; but in the way that it feels as though what Siken has to say couldn't be said any other way, with any other combination of words.

This kind of manic, despondent energy propels even the very longest of these show more poems along with devastating force. Siken's mastery over misery, over lust, over love, may extend no further than translating it into verse. And thank whatever erotic and miserable god is responsible, because if Richard Siken was happy, we wouldn't have wound up with Crush. show less

The Director of Love

Richard Siken's Crush is an amazing book. The long lines are merciless and perfect. They are so elegantly crafted they remind me of the beautiful strokes of paint of De Kooning or Frankenthaler. They also seem to be the work of a master cinematographer.The book is of course about unrequited love, about the need for love, about the failure of love. But it is also about using form to discover what is important. To save yourself, one's self, his self. The hypnotism of the show more lines, the density of the texts makes us complicit, and proves a queer sort of intimacy. Does it matter that the tumultous and turbulent loves told about in the book are same sex? Yes and no. I don't know. It should. But I can see how it doesn't also. The structure of this book is the story, the story board even. It is no accident that the first poem is entitled Scheherezade. Siken's Thousand and One Nights are told with a combination of ferocity and sentimentalism (in the best sense of this poor word), and he saves himself from the worst excesses of romanticism and expressionism by the use of a variety of directions. Imagine this, look at that, etc. The Director of Love. The books ends hopfully, you will see. show less