A Primer for the Small Weird Loves

“You Are Jeff” by Richard Siken (2005)

This is another poem published in Siken’s first poetry collection. It is a prose poem, consisting of 24 numbered segments loosely connected by a few fragmented narrative lines and numerous reiterated images, phrases, and feelings. Like “A Primer for the Small Weird Loves,” the poem is about gay male desire, hope, and heartbreak. It resists clear-cut messages and builds an overall sense of its meaning through suggestion, implication, evocation, and a gradual deepening and amplification of its emotional register.

“Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out” by Richard Siken (2005)

This is another long poem from Crush. It explores some of the same themes as “You Are Jeff” (bruising effects of desire, instability of identity, and so on) in a more recognizably poetic form, yet it also experiments with broken lines and a visual disconnectedness that reflect the fragmentary nature of the poem’s story.

“Landscape with the Blur of Conquerors” by Richard Siken (2014)

This poem demonstrates Siken’s interest in painting, both in itself and as a source of poetic inspiration. It describes the creation of a painting and the artist’s thoughts and feelings during the process of creation.

“Real Estate” by Richard Siken (2020)

This poem appeared online some 18 months after Siken’s 2019 stroke, signaling his return to writing and publishing poetry. The speaker talks about parentage, death, and inheritance. The poem reads like a personal story, but Siken has repeatedly warned against reductive biographical readings.