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A review by shimmery
Crush by Richard Siken
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.