This little collection does not mind being a bleeding scrap pulled from a ruin. It has been so long since I found some scrap of something so good. Here I am, crawling out of the blazing wreckage of 2020 to bring my fellow survivors good news. Spacing is important here, but not so much that the loss completely destroys the poem.) As far as I know the pre tag is still broken. The mystery is that there is something to keep the light To hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the lightĪs if you were the small room closed in glass The bedroom gone white, the astronomical light The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs. Sunlight pouring across your skin, your shadow 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. It is no accident that the first poem is entitled Scheherezade.

The structure of this book is the story, the story board even. Does it matter that the tumultous and turbulent loves told about in the book are same sex? Yes and no.

The hypnotism of the lines, the density of the texts makes us complicit, and proves a queer sort of intimacy. But it is also about using form to discover what is important. 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. They are so elegantly crafted they remind me of the beautiful strokes of paint of De Kooning or Frankenthaler. The long lines are merciless and perfect. Richard Siken’s poetry is daring in its construction, graceful yet startling in its beauty, and complicit with emotions and states of mind that would have remained unintelligible without him.Richard Siken's Crush is an amazing book. Winner of the 2005 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, sponsored by The Publishing Triangle at once confessional, gay, savage, and charged with a violent eroticism.'- Forecastįinalist for the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry 'Vital, immediate, and cinematic in scope, verse offers sharply observed vignettes of longing, love, and pain.'- Library Journal (Best Poetry of 2005) Recommended for all collections.'- Library Journal This book will excite patrons and be long remembered. 'Siken’s debut collection derives its energy from the friction among bodies, selves, and lovers. 'Siken writes about love, desire, violence, and eroticism with a cinematic brilliance and urgency that makes this one of the best books of contemporary poetry.'-Victoria Chang, Huffington Post

Crush by Richard Siken