num_pages: 62
description: Richard Siken’s Crush, selected as the 2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, is a powerful collection of poems driven by panic and obsession. Siken writes with ferocity, and his 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. In her introduction to the book, competition judge Louise Glück hails the “cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power, [and] purgatorial recklessness” of Siken’s poems. She notes, “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.”
language: English
title: Crush
titlecomplete: Crush
genres: 21st Century, LGBT, Queer, Poetry, Gay, Adult, Romance, Fiction, Contemporary, Queer Lit
ratings_count: 33800
series: Yale Series of Younger Poets
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Lambda Literary Award
category: Gay Poetry, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Poetry, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition
publisher: Yale University Press