Crush (Yale Series of Younger Poets)

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In the foreword to Crush, competition judge Louise Glück wrote that the poems contained "cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power, [and] purgatorial recklessness", and that "Books of this kind dream big [. 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. You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.

favorites: "litany in which certain things are crossed out," "visible world," "a primer for the small weird loves," "you are jeff.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. 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. What's left are the raw emotions of the actual experience, which is what great poetry is: distilling the massive events that make up a life until there's nothing left but the urgent parts, the ones that carry the meaning. With a start like this, and with expectations as high as mine, you'd think the book would come up short.

I think what really bothers me about the book is the lack of modulation in the narrator's obsessions, mood, and tone. 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. 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. This one's language is easy to follow and the entire thing is comprehensive and you can really see the emotions and angst, but still, I couldn't find any deeper meanings in the poems. His poetry collection Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, a Lambda Literary Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.I'll never stop reading this book, and that's the great thing with poetry, analyzing, understanding and interpreting and simply feeling it, is a never-ending process. i'm regretful that i'm not currently in a place where i can process such raw passion and anguish and aching (both aching as in longing and aching as in hurting).

I'd seen this book quoted all over, and I really looked forward to reading it because of those quotes, which I quite liked, but those few that I'd read before even opening the book were almost the only quotes I liked after completing it. 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. 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 didn’t even have a name for.

Richard Siken’s Crush, selected as the 2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, is a powerful collection of poems driven by panic and obsession. Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame. Besides, with contemporary poetry, I’m trying my best to enjoy the ride and genuinely have a good time. But similar to any caffeinated drink, if taken in excess, Crush palpitates into a ramble of overlapping emotions, eroticism, and words with only nearly achieving any kind of infectious poetic vibrancy it probably aims for.

I am not a poetry fan so some parts at the beginning cracked me up and I tried to find some sense in them and I failed. Can you imagine what it would be like to know that your liver would be eaten from your body day after day?History throws its shadow over beginning, over the desktop, over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters. The opening poem, Scheherazade (the title references to the character from One Thousand and One Nights) intimates inevitability and is foreboding in its tone. We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it.