'' Cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power'' Louise Gluck, from the Foreword to Crush I Do Know Some Things is a brave book, both in content and method. It is brave to write about childhood scars and the heartbreak the dead leave behind. It is brave to reconfigure one''s life in the aftermath of a stroke. Richard Siken presents these subjects directly, without ornament, and with nothing to hide behind, confronting the fact that he can no longer manipulate the constructions of form, or speak lies that tell the truth. In spite of these limitations, Siken chooses to write these poems and release them into a dangerous world. Each image, each sentence, is as direct as the American artist Jasper Johns''s shooting targets. Each poem is like a small room in a house, a room where you will be punched in the throat. As he claws himself back into a self, into a body, Siken has written a book that is unsettling and autobiographical by necessity, and its seventy-seven prose poems invite the reader to risk a difficult intimacy in search of yet deeper truths. ''The immense wingspan of influence that Crush has on 21st-century American poetry cannot be overstated'' Ocean Vuong

Autorentext
Richard Siken is a poet and painter. His book Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, selected by Louise Glück, a Lambda Literary Award, a Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books are War of the Foxes and I Do Know Some Things, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Siken lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Klappentext

'A spectacular comeback' Jeremy Noel Tod, Prospect
'Siken's signature intensity still throbs between sentences' The Yale Review

A collection of pitch-perfect prose poems written in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophic stroke. From the author of cult poetry bestseller, Crush.
Richard Siken's Crush was an underground international sensation. Twenty years on, he returns with the momentous I Do Know Some Things, cinematic in its tragic vision and emotive force.

In the aftermath of a stroke, the poet's language and much of his memory is, for a time, wiped out. As his mind gropes its way back from oblivion, the scenery flickers between memories of a ruptured childhood and queer coming-of-age, and the precipice of the present. Each poem is a room in a 'house owned by ghosts'.

In these seventy-seven prose poems, Siken has forged a new voice at once terrifying and vital. Brave in content and in method, I Do Know Some Things demands his recognition as an essential poet of our times.

Praise for Crush:

'Cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power' Louise Glück

'The immense wingspan of influence that Crush has on 21st-century American poetry cannot be overstated' Ocean Vuong