Crush (Yale Series of Younger Poets)

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You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for." Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again." It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere, it's more like a song on a policeman's radio, How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running until they forget that they are horses.

I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterioso under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.”I can’t NOT give Siken some credit, as this book was published in 2005 and I’m convinced it must have had some sort of impact or influence on the contemporary poets I regularly enjoy reading (Crispin Best, Sam Riviere and even Richard Scott kept coming to mind, for instance). And then, I don’t like treating contemporary poems as tiny puzzles asking to be made sense of. In fact, I normally avoid trying to grasp the meaning behind every single line – “a good poem understands itself”, as Emily Berry put it in an interview for Chicago Review of Books. Besides, with contemporary poetry, I’m trying my best to enjoy the ride and genuinely have a good time. The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.” it’s fitting that this book is called crush with how it crushes you and then you’re left lying on your bed at 3am wondering who you were before you knew these words. Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out is a brilliant poem on love and all the stories and roles we project upon it, even if the outcomes are far from what we expected based on childhood templates of fairy tales. Violence is also something that permeates the poetry of Crush, giving it a gritty and slightly desolate feel.

I've read many books, some of them have taught me about the world, about people, about feelings or ideas. This book taught me something monumental about myself. will be marked in my reading annals as re-discovering my love of poetry. My favorite of the new poets I've discovered is Richard Siken. His first volume of poems Crush, was a revelation to me; Crush changed poetry for me. with this bullet lodged in my chest, covered with your name, I will turn myself into a gun, because You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you've done something terr­ible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you're tired. You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you don't even have a name for.The stunningly intimate photograph on this anthology's cover is where my initial interest lay and I was not disappointed by the just as raw contents that lay underneath it. This powerful collection of poems is extravagant and erotic, confrontational and confused, bloody and brutal, ferocious and feral. Siken delivers something so unapologetic that it feels like his soul delivered up to the reader in the form of paper and ink. 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 Richard Siken's Crush, selected as the 2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, is a powerful collection of poems driven by obsession and love. Siken writes with ferocity, and his reader hurtles unstoppably with him. His poetry is confessional, gay, savage, and charged with violent eroticism. In the world of American poetry, Siken's voice is striking. Richard Siken his debut bundle is exciting. The American setting, with derelict towns, very much reminded me of Ocean Vuong his novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, and the thematic overlap continues with the focus on gay love. At times bitter, harsh and disappointed, sometimes lyrical, the poems in Crush feel both urgent and true.