New favorite collection of poems.

books:


	• Crush (Yale Series of Younger Poets) Richard Siken Yale University Press, 2005 - 80 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Sick. Love it.

One of my favorite book of poems. Tender and tortuous. Had a chance to meet with the author and discuss it with him. He is as interesting as the book itself. Definitely a must read.

Poems That Keep You Awake

These are poems that you read when you want to tear your heart open and feel things. These poems kept me awake revisiting loves from my past and crying over the freshness of emotion that came over me. Reading these poems in like living reality in imaginary circumstances because you are there with Richard and you want to reach out and grab his hand and let him know that he is not alone. "Dirty Valentine" is a haunting recount of love that takes you over and never gives back what is taken:

You swallow my heart and flee,but I want it back now baby. I want it back."

These are the lines you hear in your head after reading this poem This is the heart of the poem and the heart of the book.
Another poem that stands out is "Saying Your Names," words whispered to a lover in the darkness after making love:

"Names called out across the water,
names I called you behind your back,
sour and delicious, secret and unrepeatable,
the names of flowers that open only once,
shouted from balconies, shouted from rooftops,
or muffled by pillows, or whispered in sleep,"(33)

His command of imagery and form is unique in this book as well. As a poet, I am inspired by his example to write more poetry and to dig into my own life, find the poems that rest there and wake them up.

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Perfect

It's hard to sum up these poems. They're so evocative and fascinating, often transforming their meaning and intent from line to line.

In a way they are very much like the best noir films, constantly working at the edge of revelation and deception to create a narrative. The underlying themes of desire- much of it gay- and danger work beautifully with images of bullets, motorbikes, bodies and respite.

New favorite collection of poems.

It's rare than an entire collection of poems captivates me, as I usually love only pieces of a poem, whether it be a certain image or a clever turn of phrase. However I love Richard Siken's Crush in its entirety, and several individual poems within it are new all-time favorites of mine. For me at least, this collection is worth every penny.

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A scalpel's cut

"Crush" is a collection that leaves the reader breathless and entirely fulfilled. Siken's vision--helter-skelter through the depths, then rocketing to daring, dangerous heights--is exhilerating. Pain exists with joy, grit with beauty: "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." If you love poetry, and have the courage for it, GET THESE POEMS NOW!

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

Richard Siken?s Crush, selected as this year?s winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, is a powerful collection of poems driven by obsession. Siken writes with ferocity, and his reader hurtles unstoppably with him. His poetry is confessional, gay, savage, and charged with violent eroticism.

In her introduction to the book, competition judge Louise Glück hails the ?cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power, [and] purgatorial recklessness? of Siken?s poems. She notes, ?Books of this kind dream big. . . . They restore to poetry that sense of crucial moment and crucial utterance which may indeed be the great genius of the form.?

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