Crush

Richard Siken is a poet, painter, and filmmaker. He is the author of War of the Foxes and of the National Book Award finalist I Do Know Some Things. Siken lives in Tucson, AZ. Louise Glück was a Nobel Prize–winning poet and the judge of the Yale Series of Younger Poets from 2003 to 2010. Dana Levin is a poet and essayist who teaches at Maryville University and Bennington College. She lives in St. Louis, MO.

An Atlantic choice for “Best American Poetry of the 21st Century (So Far)”“Crush liberated us by telling stories, by not swallowing what felt true. In symphonic sentences, it made suppressed emotions feel propulsive. It gave words to feelings—gorgeous words.”—Richie Hofmann, Yale Review“The immense wingspan of influence that Crush has on 21st-century American poetry cannot be overstated. Not only does Siken center Queer yearning, he fills those poems with the detritus of life—the cacti, taco stands, twenty-four-hour supermarkets, interstates, boots and shag rugs—a project begun by William Carlos Williams, and here made palpable, enriched and enlarged to a whole new generation.”—Ocean Vuong, author of Time Is a MotherPraise for Previous Editions of Crush:  “One book I keep returning to is Richard Siken’s Crush. . . . The poems are vivid, heaving things, stuffed with obsession and surprises. . . . The poems aren’t comforting, but they’re invigorating. This is a book about thrashing around in the great big world, being messy, being alive.”—Elizabeth A. Harris, New York Times Book Review  “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  “Vital, immediate, and cinematic in scope, [Siken’s] verse offers sharply observed vignettes of longing, love, and pain.”—Library Journal (Best Poetry of 2005)  “Crush embodies an impressive unity of sex, the currents of feeling that carry us helplessly, fleeting encounters that often promise physical transcendence but leave us unloved or emotionally drained. . . . Crush is a vivid, fast-paced book that may be read as a single, powerful sequence.”—Antioch Review  “Richard Siken’s artistry is, quite frankly, astounding. . . . His talent is evident on almost every page. His world might be a dark one, but his writing shimmers.”—Barbara Wiedemann, Magill Book Reviews  “Every poem in Crush is every bit as immediate, engaging, and absorptive as the best films; [Siken] holds the reader rapt, making it almost impossible to look away from the beautiful and troubling scenes he sets. . . . Siken’s breathtaking debut possesses all the ingredients of poet Charles Harper Webb’s formula for great poetry: wit, passion, and impropriety. Through his powerful use of the second person, Siken reaches out to you, the reader, pulls you into his picture show, makes you the reluctant star. By the end of the collection, you are left feeling implicated, participatory.”—Kathleen Rooney, New Hampshire Review  “Siken’s debut collection, 15 years in the making, hurls the reader into a world of nerve-wracked love—relationships haunted by obsession and futility expressed with such eloquence as to make the pain of it strangely alluring. With sophisticated wordplay and provocative shifts between first and second person, Siken expresses a frustration with earthbound details and bodily confinement. He effectively juxtaposes holy wishes with mundane images—making them both seem beautiful by some strange lyrical alchemy—throwing love in with the sock drawer.”—Nell Casey, poetryfoundation.org  “An explosive, frantic splash of language and imagery that depicts both tremendous tenderness and vivid violence between male lovers. Richard Siken writes a pulsing, rambling, surrealistic, and cinematic verse. . . . While the language and energy and pure sensational vision of this poetry might seep into your soul like the whiskey so often invoked in these pages, you will taste the salt of blood on your tongue after you finish reading Crush—and you will never look at love and the comfort it promises the same way again.”—Maureen Picard Robins, Rain Taxi  Finalist for the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry  Winner of the 2005 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, sponsored by The Publishing Triangle  “Crush is a wondrous, brilliant book. Richard Siken’s poetry is daring in its construction, graceful yet startling in its beauty, and complicit with emotions and states of mind that would have remained unintelligible without him.”—Dennis Cooper