The Confusing Whirlwind of Richard Siken's Crush

 The Confusing Whirlwind of Richard Siken’s Crush

I first discovered Richard Siken through surfing the internet, collecting little clips of his poems, and storing them in Pinterest boards or blog posts. I fell in love with his queerity, his erraticism, his gritty theming that somehow manages to be simultaneously tender at certain points, though almost never tender on its own. I decided to pick up Crush because it was the collection of his that I was most familiar with, the one that most of the clips I've read had been from. I don't believe that beforehand I had ever read one of his poems in full, though I'm sure there's an exception to that rule that I'm unaware of. Crush is also the first book of poetry I've read in full, and while I do think I could have jumped into it with something a little more digestible, I am happy with my pick and I did quite enjoy the majority of the collection. There's bound to be a few bumps in the road, but not everyone can create something objectively amazing on a constant basis. 

I didn't read the entire book in order, and I do think that affected my processing of the text. When it comes to Crush, there is value in the order of the pieces. The first poem of the collection is dipping your toe into the pond while the last is diving in head first. There is a submergence, an overtaking throughout the book that allows a full immersion into Siken’s writing and the themes he utilizes. While “Snow and Dirty Rain” is the full body submergence, I do think that “You Are Jeff” is the climax, or at least I believe that was the intention. It is the longest poem in the book, and it’s one I wish I would have kept notes on as I read through it, due to all of the layers of the piece. What I get from this poem is that it’s about a sort of splitting of fates, a breaking point in someone’s life. This is not always apparent, and that is one of Siken’s flaws; I believe that oftentimes he tries to do too much while presenting it in a disorganized and disjointed manner, and it ends up being just that—disorganized and disjointed, while being nothing more. 

This fault is very clear in his piece “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out”. I literally could not tell you what this poem is about, and the way it is written makes it some of his clunkiest work I’ve read. If I had to make a guess I’d say this poem is about rejection, about being second place or being behind the scenes when you’d rather be in front of the camera, that sort of thing. The way this theme is presented to me, however, is not my style whatsoever. Lines like “What a sweet lady. Sing lady, sing! Of course, she wakes the dragon.” or “Build me a city and call it Jerusalem. Build me another and call it / Jerusalem.” Genuinely just make me upset to read, that’s how annoying they are. It’s the kind of poem that looks good skimming over it but is just not so good when you actually dig into the meat and bones of it all. A lot of the pieces in this collection toe that dangerously thin line, and they manage to make it out okay, but just barely. 

It takes reading the majority of these pieces two or three times before you can fully understand and appreciate them, which doesn’t always denote a poem to being “bad”, per se, but not everyone wants to have to read something two or three times to fully get it. I most certainly don’t, but I did anyway because I wanted to savor Siken’s writing as much as I was able to. And I did, I have plenty of favorites from this collection like “Wishbone”, “Meanwhile”, “A Primer for the Small Weird Loves”, plus others, however as I said before, perhaps I should have gone into this with something a little more digestible. Still a great read for me nonetheless.