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katenbooks's review against another edition
5.0
richard siken said “you could drown in those eyes, i said / so it’s summer, so it’s suicide / we’re helpless in sleep and struggling at the bottom of the pool” and we just fucking let him????
cathene's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Beautiful and quotable poetry. Siken just gets it. A fast and pleasant read.
rosepoints's review against another edition
5.0
i read this back in like, 2017 or smth and it fundamentally rewired my brain. that has not changed in 2024 <3
nancyboy's review against another edition
read it in honour of richard siken being active on twitter
nancyboy56's review against another edition
read it in honour of richard siken being active on twitter
shimmery's review against another edition
5.0
I remember how blown away I was when I first came across Richard Siken’s poetry — the poem I read was ‘Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out’, and after reading it once I had to read it 5 more times immediately after. I think my laptop probably still has the web page I read the poem on saved in the favourites tab.
That poem appears in this collection, along with a lot of others that convey the same urgency, desperation, confession. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s like the poem collapses time and you experience all the moments of intense emotion at once. In that way they are dreamlike — some reference dreams explicitly, but others have the same feeling because of the emotions and the moments, the scene changes, all folding in to each other. It feels like each poem has been written by a poet who knows he has a minute to live. I think Siken’s influence can be felt in a lot of contemporary poetry — Ocean Vuong’s for instance. Masterful work.
That poem appears in this collection, along with a lot of others that convey the same urgency, desperation, confession. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s like the poem collapses time and you experience all the moments of intense emotion at once. In that way they are dreamlike — some reference dreams explicitly, but others have the same feeling because of the emotions and the moments, the scene changes, all folding in to each other. It feels like each poem has been written by a poet who knows he has a minute to live. I think Siken’s influence can be felt in a lot of contemporary poetry — Ocean Vuong’s for instance. Masterful work.
bacchicecstasy's review against another edition
4.5
Some of my fave poems from the collection: little beast, boot theory, litany in which certain things are crossed out, snow and dirty rain