Crush

by Richard Siken, Louise Glück (Foreword by)

Overview

Richard Siken's Crush is a powerful new collection of poems driven by panic and obsession.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300107890
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	03/11/2005
Series:	Yale Series of Younger Poets
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Richard Siken lives in Tucson, Arizona. He is cofounder and editor of the literary magazine spork.

Read an Excerpt

Visible World

Sunlight pouring across your skin, your shadow
flat on the wall.
The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.
You had not expected this,
the bedroom gone white, the astronomical light
pummeling you in a stream of fists.
You raised your hand to your face as if
to hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the light
streams straight to the bone,
as if you were the small room closed in glass
with every speck of dust illuminated.
The light is no mystery,
the mystery is that there is something to keep the light
from passing through

Table of Contents

	Foreword
	Scheherazade	3
	Dirty valentine	4
	Little beast	5
	Seaside improvisation	8
	The torn-up road	9
	Litany in which certain things are crossed out	11
	Visible world	19
	Boot theory	20
	A primer for the small weird loves	22
	Unfinished duet	26
	I had a dream about you	28
	Straw house, straw dog	31
	Saying your names	33
	Planet of love	39
	Wishbone	40
	Driving, not washing	42
	Road music	44
	The dislocated room	46
	You are Jeff	50
	Meanwhile	59
	Snow and dirty rain	60

Editorial Reviews

Not every poet launches his career by winning the Yale Series of Younger Poets award, and not every Yale Younger Poet makes the impression Siken has made (he got a National Book Critics Circle nomination, for instance). Vital, immediate, and cinematic in scope, his verse offers sharply observed vignettes of longing, love, and pain: "Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake/ and dress them in warm clothes again./ How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running/ Until they forget that they are horses." (LJ 6/1/05) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

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, The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post - Victoria Chang