Now available in paperback, from the acclaimed author of Crush, Richard Siken's National Book Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist is a fearless meditation on illness, grief, and the difficult work of remaking the self.
It is brave to write about childhood scars and the heartbreak the dead leave behind. It is brave to reconfigure one's life in the aftermath of a stroke. Richard Siken presents these subjects directly, without ornament, and with nothing to hide behind, confronting the fact that he can no longer manipulate the constructions of form, or speak lies that tell the truth.
In spite of these limitations, Siken chooses to write these poems and release them into a dangerous world. Each image, each sentence, is as direct as the American artist Jasper Johns's shooting targets. Each poem is like a small room in a house—a room where you will be punched in the throat.
As he claws his way back into a self, into a body, Siken has written a book that is unsettling and autobiographical by necessity. These seventy-seven prose poems invite readers to risk a difficult intimacy in search of even deeper truths.