Carol Guess
“Richard Siken’s Crush illuminates the intersection of passion and violence with perfect clarity. Poems like ‘Little Beast,’ ‘A Primer for the Small Weird Loves,’ and ‘You Are Jeff’ capture the chatty, campy voices of real people in real time without ever losing the sweep and musicality of great literature. I've worn my copy into a loose portfolio of coffee-stained pages, obsessed with the simplicity and bravado of lines like, ‘Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake / and dress them in warm clothes again.’”