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"A collection of poems by Richard Siken"--
About the author
Richard Siken is a poet, painter, and filmmaker. His book
Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, selected by Louise Glück, a Lambda Literary Award, a Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books are
War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) and
I Do Know Some Things (Copper Canyon Press, 2025). Siken is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, two Lannan Fellowships, two Arizona Commission on the Arts grants, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Summary
Told through unflinching prose poetry, I Do Know Some Things navigates the fractured landmarks of family trauma and personal history.
Richard Siken’s long anticipated third collection, I Do Know Some Things, navigates the fractured landmarks of family trauma: a mother abandons her son, a husband chooses death over his wife. While excavating these losses, personal history unfolds. We witness Siken experience the death of a boyfriend and a stroke that is neglectfully misdiagnosed as a panic attack. Here, we grapple with the fear of a body forgetting itself—“the mind that / didn’t work, the leg that wouldn’t move…”—and the fear of waiting to see what a body can and cannot relearn. Meditations on language are woven throughout the collection. Nouns won’t connect and Siken must speak around a meaning: “dark-struck, slumber-felt, sleep-clogged.” To say “black tree” when one means “night.” “Part insight, part anecdote,” Siken is meticulous and fearless in his explorations of the stories that build a self. Told in 77 prose poems, I Do Know Some Things teaches us about transformation. We learn to shoulder the dark, to find beauty in “The field [that] had been swept clean of habit.”
