Crush
Script error: No such module "AfC submission catcheck".
Crush is a collection of poetry by American poet, painter, filmmaker, and editor Richard Siken.[1] The winner of the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, selected by Louise Gluck, Crush "is a powerful collection of poems driven by obsession and love."[2] Siken's poetry is described as "confessional, gay, savage, and charged with violent eroticism."[3] Crush was a finalist for the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men's Poetry and the Thom Gunn Award.[4] The book is considered by many to be a cult-classic, particularly within the LGBTQ+ community[5][6]
Style[edit]
Crush's use of multiple indentation, white space, and line breaks attracted much attention,[7] and went "against what most poets were doing ten years ago."[8] For example, Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out contains different indentation lines and lengths for every line, and they reinforce the concept that certain words, phrases, and lines seem to be redacted.[9] Siken's use of formatting was both novel and influential on how poetry has evolved since.
Themes[edit]
Crush concerns themes of grief, loneliness, queer love, death, violence, and erotica. While Siken is deliberately ambiguous about whether his poetry is based on real life,[10] he has revealed that the 1991 death of his boyfriend influenced the work to be more like elegy.[11]
Crush is thematically structured into three sections, with varying interpretations for each section. They can be seen as a transition through the speaker's relationship with death, from romanticizing death to understanding its reality, to dying himself.[12] Alternatively, Crush can be understood through the lens of the relationship between man and God: "The first part is man against man, the second is man against God, the third is God, the director of the movie, in a helicopter trying to give advice and finding that no one is listening.”[13]
Crush also deals with the nature of the body. Siken has stated that "Crush, at its core, is about rupture. The desire to touch, the gesture of touching, becomes dangerous, damaging, after the hand, withheld for so long, finally makes an attempt at contact."
As Siken's debut work, Crush was also written in an intensely personal, private manner—it was not written with the knowledge that it would be published. He has said of the book that "Crush didn't know there was going to be a readership; Crush didn’t know there was going to be an audience. And that speaker was so desperately alone."[14]
References[edit]
- ↑ Foundation, Poetry (2021-03-14). "Richard Siken". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2021-03-15.
- ↑ "Crush | Yale University Press". yalebooks.yale.edu. Retrieved 2021-03-15.
- ↑ "Crush | Yale University Press". yalebooks.yale.edu. Retrieved 2021-03-15.
- ↑ "Richard Siken". Under a Warm Green Linden. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ "Cult Classic: Richard Siken's Crush". The Rumpus.net. 2014-05-27. Retrieved 2021-03-15.
- ↑ "Poetry's Chokehold: A Look at Richard Siken's CRUSH | Interabang Books". www.interabangbooks.com. Retrieved 2021-03-15.
- ↑ "The Doubling of Self: An Interview with Richard Siken". Tin House. 2014-12-03. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ "Richard Siken". Under a Warm Green Linden. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ Foundation, Poetry (2021-03-26). "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out by Richard Siken". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ "The Doubling of Self: An Interview with Richard Siken". Tin House. 2014-12-03. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ Foundation, Poetry (2021-03-26). "Nerve-Wracked Love by Nell Casey". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ Foundation, Poetry (2021-03-26). "Nerve-Wracked Love by Nell Casey". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ Foundation, Poetry (2021-03-26). "Nerve-Wracked Love by Nell Casey". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ "Richard Siken". Under a Warm Green Linden. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
This article "Crush" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Crush. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
|
This page exists already on Wikipedia. |
