Crush (Yale Series of Younger Poets)

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I am in love with it. That's the easiest way to put it. My copy is worn out from being opened, read in, then thrown onto the table or put carelessly down as I try to gather myself up from my messy emotional pile on the floor and try to deal with, well... myself.

Bullets, movie-like violence, car rides, stitches and gritty motel rooms form recurring themes in this bundle. The world sketched is grimy and bleak, with occasional flashes of beauty and tenderness, despite violence will be marked in my reading annals as re-discovering my love of poetry. My favorite of the new poets I've discovered is Richard Siken. His first volume of poems Crush, was a revelation to me; Crush changed poetry for me.Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out is a brilliant poem on love and all the stories and roles we project upon it, even if the outcomes are far from what we expected based on childhood templates of fairy tales. Violence is also something that permeates the poetry of Crush, giving it a gritty and slightly desolate feel.

A powerful collection of poems . . . at once confessional, gay, savage, and charged with a violent eroticism.- ForecastRichard Siken his debut bundle is exciting. 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. At times bitter, harsh and disappointed, sometimes lyrical, the poems in Crush feel both urgent and true. This last panel from "You Are Jeff" concluded one of the best poems from this book. 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.