A short life of the author
Richard Siken (born 1967) is an American poet who has published only two collections — Crush (2005) and War of the Foxes (2015) — and whose influence on twenty-first-century American poetry is wildly disproportionate to his output. Crush, selected by Louise Glück for the Yale Series of Younger Poets, is one of the most intensely felt and widely shared poetry books of the century so far — a book about desire, violence, grief, and the desperation of male love written in long, cascading, almost hysterical lines that read like someone trying to speak faster than language will allow. The book found an audience far beyond the usual poetry readership: it circulated on Tumblr, Twitter, and social media platforms with a virality that few poetry collections have ever achieved, and it became a touchstone for queer readers, young readers, and anyone who had ever been consumed by love to the point of incoherence.
Life
Siken was born in New York City and grew up in the Southwest. He attended the University of Arizona, where he studied with the poet Jon Anderson. He has lived in Tucson for most of his adult life and has worked as a painter, photographer, and filmmaker in addition to writing poetry. He is notably private — he gives few interviews and avoids the self-promotional machinery of contemporary literary life.
Crush was written over a period of many years, partly in response to the death of a former partner. Siken has described the writing process as an attempt to capture the experience of overwhelming emotion — love, grief, desire, terror — in a medium (language) that is inevitably inadequate to the task.
Crush (2005)
Crush is a collection of approximately twenty poems, most of them long by contemporary standards — running to two, three, or four pages. The poems are written in a distinctive voice: breathless, repetitive, incantatory, syntactically recursive. They return obsessively to the same images — a body, a car, a gun, a road, a kitchen — and the same emotional states — desire, guilt, violence, the fear of being seen, the greater fear of not being seen.
The subject matter is the love between men — specifically, love saturated with violence, loss, and the constant threat of destruction. The poems draw on film noir, fairy tales, Greek mythology, and the American road narrative, but they are not allegories; they are direct utterances of need. “Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us,” begins “Scheherazade,” one of the collection’s most famous poems. “You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together / to make a creature that will do what I say” opens “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out.”
Louise Glück’s introduction praised the book’s “ferocity and recklessness” and described Siken as a poet for whom “the driving force… is urgency, not virtuosity.” The assessment is precise: Crush is not a technically polished book in the way that, say, a Glück collection is polished. It is raw, overwritten in places, repetitive by design, and overwhelming by intent. The poems are not meant to be admired; they are meant to be felt.
The book won the Lambda Literary Award and has sold far more copies than most Yale Younger Poets volumes. Its social media afterlife — individual lines quoted, screenshotted, tattooed — has made Siken one of the most recognised contemporary American poets among readers who may never buy another poetry book.
War of the Foxes (2015)
Siken’s second collection, published ten years after Crush, is a quieter, more cerebral book. The poems are shorter and more controlled. The subject has shifted from desire to representation — how we make images of things, how painting and drawing relate to reality, how the act of looking is itself a form of violence or love. The tone is meditative where Crush was frantic, and the book has been praised by critics who felt that Siken needed to find a register beyond the sustained emotional intensity of his debut.
War of the Foxes was well received but has not achieved the cultural penetration of Crush. It is, in many ways, the more accomplished book — more formally varied, more intellectually ambitious — but it lacks the raw power that made Crush unforgettable.
Influence and Legacy
Siken’s influence on contemporary poetry — particularly on younger poets writing about queer desire — is enormous. He is one of the poets most responsible for the resurgence of interest in confessional, emotionally direct poetry among readers who came to poetry through social media rather than through academic channels. His work has been cited as an influence by poets including Ocean Vuong, whose own debut collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016) shares Siken’s preoccupation with violence, desire, and the male body.
Critical Standing
Siken occupies an unusual position: intensely popular with readers, somewhat underexamined by critics. Crush is an essential book of twenty-first-century American poetry — flawed, excessive, and unforgettable. Whether Siken publishes more or remains a two-book poet, his place is secure.
Collecting Siken
Crush (2005, Yale University Press) in first edition brings $100–$300 — the book’s enormous popularity has driven demand far beyond what is typical for a Yale Younger Poets volume. Signed copies bring $200–$500. War of the Foxes (2015, Copper Canyon Press) brings $30–$80. Siken signs infrequently, making authenticated signatures valuable.