Crush (Yale Series of Younger Poets)

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This last panel from "You Are Jeff" concluded one of the best poems from this book. If you are a GR friend of mine, I have probably already sent you a poem (or 2, or 3) from this book as I've taken my time to read through it. Siken's debut collection derives its energy from the friction among bodies, selves, and lovers. . . . This book will excite patrons and be long remembered. Recommended for all collections.- Library Journal

It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere, it's more like a song on a policeman's radio,it’s fitting that this book is called crush with how it crushes you and then you’re left lying on your bed at 3am wondering who you were before you knew these words. A powerful collection of poems . . . at once confessional, gay, savage, and charged with a violent eroticism.- Forecast

I am in love with it. That's the easiest way to put it. My copy is worn out from being opened, read in, then thrown onto the table or put carelessly down as I try to gather myself up from my messy emotional pile on the floor and try to deal with, well... myself. how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple What the book doesn’t tell you directly is that Richard Siken was partially influenced by the death of his boyfriend. I don’t want to make any assumptions here about how that has influenced the content, but I will say that the poems read like a lover trying to move on from something that is, well, crushing. Moving on is not something you can just will yourself to do. Siken is beyond talented with words, that much is clear, this entire collection is a work of pure art, something you rarely find these days. Every line is powerful, it's got secrets. Every poem has meaning, and soul and something deeply terrifying about it.You are playing cards with three Jeffs. One is your father, one is your brother, and the other is your current boyfriend. All of them have seen you naked and heard you talking in your sleep. Your boyfriend Jeff gets up to answer the phone. To them he is a mirror, but to you he is a room. Phone's for you, Jeff says. Hey! It's Uncle Jeff, who isn't really your uncle, but you can't talk right now, one of the Jeffs has put his tongue in your mouth. Please let it be the right one." The stunningly intimate photograph on this anthology's cover is where my initial interest lay and I was not disappointed by the just as raw contents that lay underneath it. This powerful collection of poems is extravagant and erotic, confrontational and confused, bloody and brutal, ferocious and feral. Siken delivers something so unapologetic that it feels like his soul delivered up to the reader in the form of paper and ink. Richard Siken his debut bundle is exciting. The American setting, with derelict towns, very much reminded me of Ocean Vuong his novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, and the thematic overlap continues with the focus on gay love. At times bitter, harsh and disappointed, sometimes lyrical, the poems in Crush feel both urgent and true. I've read many books, some of them have taught me about the world, about people, about feelings or ideas. This book taught me something monumental about myself. A kiss, blood, hunger, hidden glances, light, leather, pain ... these poems take you out of your comfort zone and make you confront your fears.

Ugh why does everyone love this book? Siken, the winner of the 2004 Yale Series, is clearly a capable poet, and there were a few moments in this collection that were beautiful and lucid. Otherwise, though, the poems are so overblown (too many words going in too many directions) and drowning in imagery of bodies, knives, and death. Oh, and SO much cheesy, disembodied dialogue. Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again." I woke up in the morning and I didn’t want anything, didn’t do anything, couldn’t do it anyway, just lay there listening to the blood rush This little poetry book is divided into three parts, the author at first doesn't tell you what is going on but later all the parts are related and is kind of a story. Mostly every chapter contain the word “kill”, “suicide”, and “hit” it was tiresome reading the same chapters over and over with the same words just in different scenarios, the person who speak and tells these stories is in an abusive relationship and want to escape so this person just create scenarios in their head and speak aloud for some kind of liberation. I only liked the first but after that every section describes how this abusive relationship started and grew. You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you've done something terr­ible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you're tired. You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you don't even have a name for.

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. I've read parts of this book separately and reading it whole now takes me to places I thought I left, a previous lover read to me a poem by him, I've read lines of the book once so many times that some days of mine were titled by some of these verses. Vital, immediate, and cinematic in scope, [Siken's] verse offers sharply observed vignettes of longing, love, and pain.- Library Journal (Best Poetry of 2005) You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for." You, the moon. You, the road. You, the little flowers/by the side of the road. You keep singing along to that song I hate. Stop singing." -Road Music