Richard Siken

'A spectacular comeback' Jeremy Noel Tod, Prospect 'Siken’s signature intensity still throbs between sentences' The Yale Review A collection of pitch-perfect prose poems written in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophic stroke. From the author of cult poetry bestseller, Crush. Richard Siken’s Crush was an underground international sensation. Twenty years on, he returns with the momentous I Do Know Some Things, cinematic in its tragic vision and emotive force. In the aftermath of a stroke, the poet’s language and much of his memory is, for a time, wiped out. As his mind gropes its way back from oblivion, the scenery flickers between memories of a ruptured childhood and queer coming-of-age, and the precipice of the present. Each poem is a room in a ‘house owned by ghosts'. In these seventy-seven prose poems, Siken has forged a new voice at once terrifying and vital. Brave in content and in method, I Do Know Some Things demands his recognition as an essential poet of our times. Praise for Crush: 'Cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power' Louise Glück ‘The immense wingspan of influence that Crush has on 21st-century American poetry cannot be overstated’ Ocean Vuong

Told through unflinching prose poetry, I Do Know Some Things navigates the fractured landmarks of family trauma and personal history. Richard Siken's long anticipated third collection, I Do Know Some Things, navigates the fractured landmarks of family trauma: a mother abandons her son, a husband chooses death over his wife. While excavating these losses, personal history unfolds. We witness Siken experience the death of a boyfriend and a stroke that is neglectfully misdiagnosed as a panic attack. Here, we grapple with the fear of a body forgetting itself--"the mind that / didn't work, the leg that wouldn't move..."--and the fear of waiting to see what a body can and cannot relearn. Meditations on language are woven throughout the collection. Nouns won't connect and Siken must speak around a meaning: "dark-struck, slumber-felt, sleep-clogged." To say "black tree" when one means "night." "Part insight, part anecdote," Siken is meticulous and fearless in his explorations of the stories that build a self. Told in 77 prose poems, I Do Know Some Things teaches us about transformation. We learn to shoulder the dark, to find beauty in "The field that] had been swept clean of habit."

The twentieth-anniversary edition of the influential first poetry collection by Richard Siken An Atlantic choice for “Best American Poetry of the 21st Century (So Far)” Since winning the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, Crush has become a modern classic. This twentieth-anniversary edition includes a new introduction by award-winning poet Dana Levin and a new afterword by the author.

Prisbelønnet kultudgivelse af Richard Siken fra 2005 oversat til dansk.Knald er inspireret af hans kærestes død og Sikens stil er bevæget og bevægende, på én gang drømmende og brat opvågnet. Digtsamlingen handler blandt andet om (homo)seksualitet, kærlighed og (selv)destruktion. Knald var vinder af "Yale Younger Poets prize" udvalgt af Louise Glück (Nobelprisvinder 2020). Knald var også finalist i blandt andet National Book Critics Circle Award og the Lambda Literary Award. Louise Glück skrev blandt andet:"Richard Sikens metode er ren manisk impro, med digteren i alle roller: Han er dyret der står lammet i forlygternes lys; Han er også det ræsende køretøj, bilen der ikke stopper, fartens mekanisme. Bogen er bragende fjernlys: slingrende, bidsk, hovedkulds, umættelig."

Finalist for the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry—an erotic, powerful collection An Atlantic choice for “Best American Poetry of the 21st Century (So Far)” “One of the best books of contemporary poetry.”—Victoria Chang, Huffington Post “Vital, immediate, and cinematic in scope.”—Library Journal (Best Poetry of 2005) Selected by Nobel Prize laureate and competition judge Louise Glück as the 2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, Richard Siken’s Crush 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. In her introduction to the book, 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.”

"This may be the most anticipated poetry book of the last decade...expect it to haunt you."--NPR.orgIn reviewing Richard Siken's first book, Crush, the New York Times wrote that his territory is where] passion and eloquence collide and fuse. In this long-awaited follow-up to Crush, Siken turns toward the problems of making and representation, in an unrelenting interrogation of our world of doublings. In this restless, swerving book simple questions--such as, Why paint a bird?--are immediately complicated by concerns of morality, human capacity, and the ways we look to art for meaning and purpose while participating in its--and our own--invention.* Slippery, magnetic riffs on the arbitrary divisions made by the human mind in light of the mathematical abstractions that delete them; poetry lovers will want to read.--Library Journal, starred review P]oems of passion, examining what it means to love, to be, and to create.--Vanity FairSiken's stark, startling collection focuses tightly on both the futility and the importance of creating art.--Booklist"Poems primarily about painting and representation give way to images that become central characters in a sequence of fable-like pieces. Animals, landscapes, objects, and an array of characters serve as sites for big, human questions to play out in distilled form. Siken's sense of line has become more uniform, this steadiness punctuated by moments of cinematic urgency."--Publishers WeeklyWar of the Foxes builds upon the lush and frantic magic of Richard Siken's first book, Crush. In this second book, Siken takes breathtaking control of the rich, varied material he has chosen...Siken paints and erases--the metaphor of painting with words allows him to leave those traces that mostly go unseen. He is the Trickster. If paint/then no paint. He does this with astonishing candor and passion.--The RumpusThe MuseumTwo lovers went to the museum and wandered the rooms.He saw a painting and stood in front of itfor too long. It was a few minutes before sherealized he had gotten stuck. He was stuck lookingat a painting. She stood next to him, looking at hisface and then the face in the painting. What do yousee? she asked. I don't know, he said. He didn'tknow. She was disappointed, then bored. He waslooking at a face and she was looking at her watch.This is where everything changed . . .Richard Siken is a poet, painter, and filmmaker. His first book, Crush, won the Yale Younger Poets' prize. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.