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Crush -- Poems by Richard Siken

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 to prepare yourself for the worlds of panic, death, and love which are to come. Siken reminisces in sadness and joy, madness and damagingly clear thought. He pairs image and notion with time and yearning. There is beauty in the voice and damage of this book.

Siken's poems are punk rock anthems, old country ballads, 60's B-movies, pulp novels, tin pail lunch boxes stuffed with old polaroids and love letters. His poems progress to a down tempo drum beat, and the skill in line break leaves the reader constantly moving forward, the combination forces us to digest and contemplate the words as they come, but never let up a moment for us to stop chewing. It's almost dumbfounding how Siken combines the long breath of a Ginsberg with the complete, unornamental word choice of a Creeley.

Crush is a project in obsession. The repetition of pacing and break builds on the down tempo into a culminating panic under the weight of body and the gravity of obsessive love. Siken has, within Crush, created a world of love and death, of paranoia, where voices drift in and out, where the self questions its other aloud, causing disbelief in the fact of the world even as it builds around us into existence.

Labels: Recommended Reading