Crush

Richard Siken's Crush is a powerful collection of poems driven by obsession and love. Siken writes with ferocity, and the reader hurtles unstoppably with him. His poetry is confessional, gay, savage, and charged with violent eroticism. In the world of American poetry, Siken's voice is striking.

Endorsements

2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets competition

Finalist for the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry

“Siken writes about love, desire, violence, and eroticism with a cinematic brilliance and urgency that makes this one of the best books of contemporary poetry.” — Victoria Chang, Huffington Post

“Cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power, [and] purgatorial recklessness. Books of this kind dream big... They restore to poetry that sense of crucial moment and crucial utterance which may indeed be the great genius of the form.” — Louise Gluck