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.”
