jamiereadthis
Written on May 26, 2020
The 2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets competition: a powerful, confessional, erotic collection
Finalist for the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry
“Siken writes about love, desire, violence, and eroticism with a cinematic brilliance and urgency that makes this one of the best books of contemporary poetry.”—Victoria Chang, Huffington Post
Richard Siken’s Crush, selected as the 2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, is a powerful collection of poems driven by obsession and love. Siken writes with ferocity, and his reader hurtles unstoppably with him. His poetry is confessional, gay, savage, and charged with violent eroticism. In the world of American poetry, Siken’s voice is striking.
In her introduction to the book, competition judge Louise Glück hails the “cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power, [and] purgatorial recklessness” of Siken’s poems. She notes, “Books of this kind dream big. . . . They restore to poetry that sense of crucial moment and crucial utterance which may indeed be the great genius of the form.”
- ISBN10 0300107897
- ISBN13 9780300107890
- Publish Date 11 April 2005
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 4 March 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Yale University Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 80
- Language English
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