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A review by b0ygenius
Crush by Richard Siken
emotional
reflective
sad
5.0
SO LONG but tl;dr READ THIS even if you think you don’t like poetry PLEAAAAASEEE give this a chance i did and i am forever glad that i did. Seriously changed my life
[first read, oct. 5 2021] the best way to describe the way this made me feel is that it made me sick to my stomach. there is this heavy lump that sits here, low in my stomach every time i read or even think about this and i feel like i will throw up because there is So Much going on inside of me and it needs to go somewhere. i can’t keep all of this inside. the amount of times i violently sobbed reading this is. insane
i tried to make a list of my favorites as i read but i eventually gave up when i realized i was adding pretty much all of them to it. i will say, though, that i have memorized scheherazade and half of little beast from reading them so much, and “we pull our boots on with both hands but we can’t punch ourselves awake, and all i can do is stand on the curb and say ‘sorry about the blood in your mouth. i wish it were mine.’ i couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but i wore his jacket for the longest time.” has been rattling around my head for the past 48 hours. so.
now i understand those stories where people sell their souls to the devil for the ability to sing, to act, to dance, to write. i would give everything i can get my hands on and more to write something like this. to even understand humanity and love and violence and emotions and identity enough to put it into words like that.
jesus fucking christ. sometimes i forgot how much reading makes me feel alive
[4th full read (?), march 13 2022] i don't think crush will ever stop making me feel the way it does. i have read it so many times at this point and every single time i do i still feel it clawing at my insides. i have a physical copy that has a permanent place on my nightstand bc of how much i pick it up to read a poem or two or when i have a particular line stuck in my head and i pick it up just to stare at that line. i have a pdf copy on my computer that is very heavily annotated. as i write this i just came off of a ~1 hour session of me just scrolling thru the pdf and writing stuff down, noting themes and such. i just Love crush so much i don't even know how to put it into words all i can do is just Beg literally anyone who will listen to read it. all my friends are probably sick of me trying to recommend it to them. i can't get it out of my head
[lost count of rereads, march 26 2022] not even two weeks since my last full reread and it still just breaks me. every single poem is brilliant. like i cannot stress enough how this completely changed the way i read and look at poetry. like, i Get It now. i get why people spend all this time breaking apart complex poems line by line because it is Worth it. even when i was reading crush for the first time and i missed all the connections and complex metaphors i still Loved it. it was like, “this is incredible and it’s making me so many things and i don’t understand what it all means but i really want to” and i have spent so long picking it apart and analyzing the metaphors and double meanings and all that and it was so worth it and so fun and every time i read crush it gets better and i just. i cant even put it into words like this changed my life i’m so serious god please read this
[first read, oct. 5 2021] the best way to describe the way this made me feel is that it made me sick to my stomach. there is this heavy lump that sits here, low in my stomach every time i read or even think about this and i feel like i will throw up because there is So Much going on inside of me and it needs to go somewhere. i can’t keep all of this inside. the amount of times i violently sobbed reading this is. insane
i tried to make a list of my favorites as i read but i eventually gave up when i realized i was adding pretty much all of them to it. i will say, though, that i have memorized scheherazade and half of little beast from reading them so much, and “we pull our boots on with both hands but we can’t punch ourselves awake, and all i can do is stand on the curb and say ‘sorry about the blood in your mouth. i wish it were mine.’ i couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but i wore his jacket for the longest time.” has been rattling around my head for the past 48 hours. so.
now i understand those stories where people sell their souls to the devil for the ability to sing, to act, to dance, to write. i would give everything i can get my hands on and more to write something like this. to even understand humanity and love and violence and emotions and identity enough to put it into words like that.
jesus fucking christ. sometimes i forgot how much reading makes me feel alive
[4th full read (?), march 13 2022] i don't think crush will ever stop making me feel the way it does. i have read it so many times at this point and every single time i do i still feel it clawing at my insides. i have a physical copy that has a permanent place on my nightstand bc of how much i pick it up to read a poem or two or when i have a particular line stuck in my head and i pick it up just to stare at that line. i have a pdf copy on my computer that is very heavily annotated. as i write this i just came off of a ~1 hour session of me just scrolling thru the pdf and writing stuff down, noting themes and such. i just Love crush so much i don't even know how to put it into words all i can do is just Beg literally anyone who will listen to read it. all my friends are probably sick of me trying to recommend it to them. i can't get it out of my head
[lost count of rereads, march 26 2022] not even two weeks since my last full reread and it still just breaks me. every single poem is brilliant. like i cannot stress enough how this completely changed the way i read and look at poetry. like, i Get It now. i get why people spend all this time breaking apart complex poems line by line because it is Worth it. even when i was reading crush for the first time and i missed all the connections and complex metaphors i still Loved it. it was like, “this is incredible and it’s making me so many things and i don’t understand what it all means but i really want to” and i have spent so long picking it apart and analyzing the metaphors and double meanings and all that and it was so worth it and so fun and every time i read crush it gets better and i just. i cant even put it into words like this changed my life i’m so serious god please read this
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Hate crime, Homophobia, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail