book data
439 ratings,
4.51
average rating, 64 reviews
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published
April 11th 2005
by Yale University Press
binding
Hardcover, 80 pages
isbn
0300107218
(isbn13: 9780300107210)
description
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 wr...more
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 624)
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avg 4.51
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
Read in March, 2007
SIken's Crush, his first book which also won the Yale Young Poets' award in 2004, is one of he most complete works of poetry I've come across in years.
He uses the pacing of his long line to slow time, and create a darker atmosphere within the verse, where shadows move from walls and creep along the legs of lovers. Time drags in elongated moments, or appears in flashes of memory and scenescape. His pace and image teach us fight from the first two pages how to read the work, and how t...more
He uses the pacing of his long line to slow time, and create a darker atmosphere within the verse, where shadows move from walls and creep along the legs of lovers. Time drags in elongated moments, or appears in flashes of memory and scenescape. His pace and image teach us fight from the first two pages how to read the work, and how t...more
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Read in June, 2007
recommends it for:
people who like poetry that feels current; aficionados of messy love
Really excellent. Vivid images and an interesting use of cadence. Poems about the queer experience and desperation and the details of love. This book won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize & got an introduction from Louise Glück.
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Read in February, 2009
Thanks for lending this to me, Courtney!
I think I will start reading lots of confessional, juicy, intense poetry on the subway. Next up - Sharon Olds!
I think I will start reading lots of confessional, juicy, intense poetry on the subway. Next up - Sharon Olds!
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4 comments
Read in June, 2007
recommends it for:
Everyone
I felt like I had the wind knocked out of me after I read this. There's a thread of a story here, but it's abstract and shadowed. Almost a ghost of a story. What's left are the raw emotions of the actual experience, which is what great poetry is: distilling the massive events that make up a life until there's nothing left but the urgent parts, the ones that carry the meaning.
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recommends it for:
“a slender boy with a handgun / a fast car, a bottle of pills.”
this is my coworker chad's favorite poetry book ever. he wouldn't stop talking about it and tried to start some contest with me to see how many he could sell. it was really annoying. then i read it and now whenever he brings it up i just have to sigh heavy because this little book is quite incredible and sexy and pure swimming pool immersion.
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Read in November, 2008
Louise Gluck writes in her foreward to Siken's award-winning debut that "for a book like this to work, it cannot deviate from obsession (lest its urgency, in being occasional, seem unconvincing)." Praiseworthy for its very obsessiveness, Siken pens lines taut as the shards of a mirror broken in in frustration, in fear of what one sees staring into one's own eyes. Themes of lost, often abusive love writhe in these poems, and though one might fault Siken for his overbearing formal sugges...more
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Yes, it's about love (not the healthy kind recommended for Valentine's Day, though). As confessional poetry, it's accessible and yet, not overwhelmingly self-involved. Can spark interesting discussions, or just enjoy listening to it.
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Read in March, 2007
stunning collection of obssessive, brutally raw poetry. This is one of those books that, to paraphrase Miss Dickinson, took off the top of my head. a little grenade of a book.
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Has a copy to sell/swap
—
Read in September, 2008
recommends it for:
Someone who feels cynical about love...
There is a mania to Richard Siken's poetry. It is wild, relentless, at times darkly humorous, at times despairing, always troubled, and leads me to imagine hat it bursts from him unceasingly. There is absolutely heartbreak and pain at the core of this volume, and Siken's articulations of it are manifold. He seems to be telling and re-telling a story in a myriad of ways, from all points of view--sometimes hurt, sometimes, bitter, sometimes resigned and humorous. But the reiterations are only ...more
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Read in August, 2006
Recently, this book of poetry has been getting quite a book of publicity: in 2004, then-poet laureate Louise Glück (who is fabulous, I might add) selected him as the winner of Yale Younger Poets prize, and in 2006, Crush won the Lambda Literary Award for poetry. I picked it up quite awhile ago, initially because Louise Glück wrote the forward and secondarily because Siken is gay. Since then, I've read a poem here and there but never actually sat down and read the book from cover to cover. Unti...more
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“Scheherazade”
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.
It’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance,...more
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.
It’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance,...more
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Read in September, 2007
With a forward by Louise Gluck, it has to be good, and the forward is good. The very first sentence had me with This is a book about panic. And like Claudia Rankine, Riken is certainly, incontestably, a poet.
I swallow your heart and it crawls right out of my mouth.
I didn’t want to see it this way, everything eating everything in the end.
and all the names of our dark heaven crackling in the pan
we’ve made a graveyard out of the bone white aft...more
I swallow your heart and it crawls right out of my mouth.
I didn’t want to see it this way, everything eating everything in the end.
and all the names of our dark heaven crackling in the pan
we’ve made a graveyard out of the bone white aft...more
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Read in November, 2007
First read the incredible intro by Louise Gluck, the poet and writer who chooses the Yale Series of Younger Poets pize each year, then take a few days to go through this book the first time.
I have to say, I learned quite a bit about poetry from this collection, not to mention the extent to which I enjoyed reading it. I don't read much poetry, though, so take how you will.
The poems are pretty dark and violent for the most part. There is a sense of suffocation in almost every one. I...more
I have to say, I learned quite a bit about poetry from this collection, not to mention the extent to which I enjoyed reading it. I don't read much poetry, though, so take how you will.
The poems are pretty dark and violent for the most part. There is a sense of suffocation in almost every one. I...more
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Read in January, 2004
Whenever I enter a bookstore, I find myself looking for this book. Whenever I find it I buy it, because I try to give it to anyone who may appreciate it. I can't help but be melodramatic when I speak about Crush; I don't think anyone can say they know me unless they've read it.
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I was basically hypnotized by this poetry -- the images and the rhythm. My favorite poem in the book: Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out. It could be my favorite poem ever. Read it.
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I have to agree that the first poem is depressingly, astoundingly good. It made me feel like I shouldn't bother writing anymore. Siken seems like a hipsters dream come true—sexy, violent, crushed, and ironic. His use of tiny sentences and tons of periods reminds me of a myspace page, and his storylines that more than once involve a gunshot wound are dubious at best. They seem almost pornographic in their immediacy—that is to say, you don't learn why this person was shot, or where they will g...more
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Read in March, 2009
So good. I read it cover to cover in about two hours, and then read it again (I was also stuck in a car on the way home from Nashville).
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Read in November, 2008
Read that 4 star rating as a 4 1/2 or a 4 3/4.
Absolutely fantastic book of poetry. Raw, brutal, honest...
Absolutely fantastic book of poetry. Raw, brutal, honest...
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Read in May, 2008
recommended to malic by:
jp.recommends it for: heartbroken queers.
i like to skip around and take my time. i like it when jp reads it out loud, and someday i hope to have read/heard all the poems out loud.
my words to describe these poems all seem exaggerated or sentimental.... so this is from the book's forward:
"this is a book about panic. the word is never mentioned. nor is the condition analyzed or described--the speaker is never outside it long enough to differentiate panic from other states. In the world of "Crush,"...more
my words to describe these poems all seem exaggerated or sentimental.... so this is from the book's forward:
"this is a book about panic. the word is never mentioned. nor is the condition analyzed or described--the speaker is never outside it long enough to differentiate panic from other states. In the world of "Crush,"...more
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Read in January, 2006
My favorite poetry collection in this century (so far). I love its intensity and lyricism.
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