I Do Know Some Things is a brave book, both in content and method.
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 himself back into a self, into a body, Siken has written a book that is unsettling and autobiographical by necessity, and its seventy-seven prose poems invite the reader to risk a difficult intimacy in search of yet deeper truths.
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.
Industry Reviews
"Cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power... Books of this kind dream big [and] restore to poetry that sense of crucial moment and crucial utterance which may indeed be the great genius of the form." -Louise Glueck, from the Foreword to Crush
"If we think about Crush as an extended elegy, then we can think about War of the Foxes as an extended ars poetica-a poem about the act of writing a poem. This commentary on creating might come from the fact that Siken is not only a poet, but also a painter-his hands are always making, in one medium or another." -Southeast Review
"Siken has written a book that is completely universal, by which I mean, this book is a universe unto itself. By which I mean, when visited, this book introduces you to people you think you recognize, but just can't place. These poems want you to think you have read them before, & maybe you have, but you weren't the same person then, & you aren't the same person now." -Adroit Journal
"Siken writes about love, desire, violence, and eroticism with a cinematic brilliance and urgency that makes this one of the best books of contemporary poetry." -Victoria Chang, Huffington Post
"Richard Siken's Crush changed poetry for me; after reading this book, poetry suddenly became something that was passionate, tender, and complicated, but also accessible. This was the book that made me think I might want to read a collection of poems as much as I'd want to read a novel, something I'd never even imagined." -Minnesota Review
"War of the Foxes builds upon the lush and frantic magic of Richard Siken's first book, Crush. In this second book, Siken takes breathtaking control of the rich, varied material he has chosen...Siken paints and erases - the metaphor of painting with words allows him to leave those traces that mostly go unseen. He is the Trickster. If paint/then no paint. He does this with astonishing candor and passion." -The Rumpus
