With the very long lines often come very long sentences, but just like the lines, there are many very short sentences amongst the long ones. Because of this, the reader can sense the chaos and panic in these poems before she even begins reading them glancing at a single poem can make her feel overwhelmed, frantic, and even claustrophobic because so much is packed onto a single page without any sign of pattern. One thing I like about Siken is that he is not afraid to use the entire page long lines that often wrap around into the next line are mixed with short lines that are often indented or even flush to the right margin. His second (and much anticipated!) book, War of the Foxes, is coming out from Copper Canyon Press in April. Siken was born in New York City and currently lives in Tucson, Arizona, where he is also a filmmaker, painter, and editor at Spork Press, a small press in Tucson that publishes a quarterly literary magazine called Spork, as well as chapbooks and novels.

Siken spent fifteen years writing Crush, influenced by the 1991 death of his boyfriend. While Siken is devoted to emotions, he is also interested in the physical body and the damage both can do.

In his book, Siken writes about panic without saying “panic” and writes about obsession without risking cliché sentimentality or becoming predictable.

Danielle told me to read that poem and then go home and buy the book.Ĭrush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. In trying to point me to poems that displayed different kinds of tension (dramatic, linguistic, as well as tension in form, in juxtaposition, in movement, etc.) she gave me a packet of poems that modeled these, as well as a list of exercises that might help me generate work that inherently contained “tension.” The first poem in the packet was Siken’s “ Planet of Love,” filed under “dramatic tension” section. While working on my MA thesis, a chapbook of poems, at the University of Cincinnati, one of my professors, Danielle Deulen, in reviewing my work, said that my poems lacked tension. Though at this point I had been studying poetry for years, this is the book that made me love poetry.

This was the book that made me think I might want to read a collection of poems as much as I’d want to read a novel, something I’d never even imagined. Richard Siken’s Crush changed poetry for me after reading this book, poetry suddenly became something that was passionate, tender, and complicated, but also accessible. In honor of Valentine’s Day this week, I want to celebrate a book of poems I’m in love with.

Richard siken poems