{"product_id":"i-do-know-some-things","title":"I Do Know Some Things","description":"\n\u003ctable align=\"center\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\"\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"productDetailSmallElements\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eBiographical Note\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eRichard Siken\u003c\/b\u003e is a poet, painter, and filmmaker. His book \n\u003ci\u003eCrush\u003c\/i\u003e 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 \n\u003ci\u003eWar of the Foxes\u003c\/i\u003e (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) and \n\u003ci\u003eI Do Know Some Things\u003c\/i\u003e (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. \n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eBrief Description\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A collection of poems by Richard Siken\"--\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eI Do Know Some Things\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"An astonishing feat of poetic prowess. . . . Siken has created 'an encyclopedia of myself, ' a kaleidoscope of memory, language and identity that reveals--at times revels--in the faultiness of our own narratives. Siken's voice--and language--is both rooted and aloft, even as he avers that these are not 'poems of song.' Beyond such marvels, this is a virtuosity of candor and technique, bound by a seemingly effortless linguistic choreography that leans into multiplicity and mutability, with continuous sparks and joys, from one of our finest contemporary poets.\"--\u003cb\u003eMandana Chaffa, \u003ci\u003eChicago Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Moving, dense, and rich with recollections, woven masterfully with threads of his past, his recovery, and more lyrical pieces that seem to come from parallel universes he visited or dreams he had while in the initial days and weeks of recovery.\"--\u003cb\u003eCiara Shuttleworth, \u003ci\u003eUCLA Radiation Oncology Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In this heartfelt, asynchronous, and beautifully strange chronicle of his stroke and its aftermath, he illuminates the labyrinths of memory, selfhood, and time. And we're all brighter for it.\"--\u003cb\u003eChristopher Nelson, \u003ci\u003eUnder a Warm Green Linden\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eI Do Know Some Things\u003c\/i\u003e recounts not only his stroke, the horror of it, but also the recovery. . . . Siken rebuilds the word and world from nothing, and writes it down. A poet can make us see common words anew, challenging and breaking the language we are given. Siken's book, then, extends this work of the poet, or undermines it. It asks what a poem by a body-mind being destroyed can give us. It asks whether words can describe, and hold, the loss of meaning. Words about losing words, language about losing language.\"--\u003cb\u003eJoseph Osmundsen, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Though unadorned in its storytelling, \u003ci\u003eI Do Know Some Things\u003c\/i\u003e is a sophisticated work of art. Siken's skillful layering of stories, sense of humor, depth of humanity, and varied approaches to prose create richness as the book builds. Readers will find this collection more profound through learning what the author has endured, but ultimately it is what Siken does with his past that makes the book exceptional.\"--\u003cb\u003eMatthew Valades, \u003ci\u003eRain Taxi\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"If Hollywood ever takes an interest in 21st-century American poetry, my money would be on the life and work of Richard Siken. . . . \u003ci\u003eI Do Know Some Things\u003c\/i\u003e is a sequence of 77 one-paragraph prose poems which flash through a personal saga of such relentless intensity that it feels as likely to win an Oscar as a Pulitzer. . . . Siken is a deadpan virtuoso of the wrongfooting observation, his prose flickering between confessions as he remembers the frightening poetry of pure confusion.\"--\u003cb\u003eJeremy Noel-Tod, \u003ci\u003eProspect Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"An absolute feat that Siken creates such a compelling and wide-ranging book from the single form. . . . Siken is certainly not the same as before [his stroke], but the changes are hard-earned. The work here is shown. The thread was lost, or cut, then woven back together by the poet's own grit and love for the medium. He could not go on and yet here he is, going on.\"--\u003cb\u003eC. Francis Fisher, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The second-person strategies of Crush are abandoned in \u003ci\u003eI Do Know Some Things\u003c\/i\u003e for a more direct style, but Siken's signature intensity still throbs between sentences. . . . Siken's prose is often deft and exciting. As he relearned everything, the prose poem helped him rediscover how to create poetic tension, how to be dynamic without the gravity-defying magic of enjambment. Syntactic variation. Quick, unexpected shifts in register. Artful repetition. These are all refined strategies in the collection. The prose is also a steadying element. It is another way of not losing oneself, of not falling through the cracks.\"--\u003cb\u003eRichie Hoffman, \u003ci\u003eYale Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"One of the most striking aspects of \u003ci\u003eI Do Know Some Things\u003c\/i\u003e is its form. The tight prose blocks are unfamiliar to anyone expecting the libidinal and languorous errancy of Crush, or the dizzying descriptive wanderlust of War of the Foxes. There is a powerful constriction here, as if Siken wants readers to witness him journeying back to his body.\"--\u003cb\u003eRaquel Gutiérrez, \u003ci\u003ePoetry Foundation\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Abandoning traditional line breaks, Siken lets the text unfurl in dense prose blocks that mirror the fractured cognition and halted speech of his recovery. The result is a raw, autobiographical reckoning with childhood trauma, loss, and the fragility of the body, delivered in a stark and unornamented voice.\"--\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eElectric Lit\u003c\/i\u003e, Best Poetry Collections of 2025\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Regardless of the style, Siken maintains a confessional approach: Driving all his work is the urge to externalize something suppressed--in \u003ci\u003eCrush\u003c\/i\u003e, through a frenzied release of emotion and longing, and in \u003ci\u003eI Do Know Some Things\u003c\/i\u003e, through logic and order as a means of accessing a disorienting period in his life. . . . Siken's insistence that all you need to know about him is there in his verse may once have seemed like a writer's prideful comeback, but in \u003ci\u003eI Do Know Some Things\u003c\/i\u003e he has made it true, as he relinquishes control over the inner life he once so closely guarded.\"--\u003cb\u003eYvonne Kim, \u003ci\u003eNation\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It's no exaggeration to call this book 'long awaited.' \u003ci\u003eI Do Know Some Things\u003c\/i\u003e consists of 77 prose poems, and no matter what story each one tells about the poet's complex life and ruminations, it nearly always begins with a memorable first sentence. . . . The biggest narrative through-line concerns the misdiagnosis of a stroke Siken suffered as a panic attack, and the inevitable complications that follow. Yet whatever happens, Siken maintains not only an astonishingly clear recall of the details but also a saving sense of irony.\"--\u003cb\u003eDavid Starkey, \u003ci\u003eCalifornia Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This is brutal work, sometimes frightening in its handling of aging and death--life as damage--and the struggle to recover one's body, mind and self after crisis. Siken is also interrogating selfhood as a long artful project, a mode of defense, an act of deceit. . . . This book can be bleak, but also magical (.Below the bed the floor, the earth, then out the other side and stars. I fell in all directions') and funny in a Glückian way--a one-syllable laugh in the devil's face. 'If it's any consolation, ' he writes, 'I'll never forgive you.'\"--\u003cb\u003eElisa Gabbert, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \"Best Poetry of 2025\"\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Each book is an opportunity to respond to the writer's cardinal question: How to put it? Siken's latest poetry collection, an autobiography in fragments, offers one answer, such as it is: back together. After a stroke in 2019, Siken abandoned the deft enjambments of his earlier work (including a debut, \u003ci\u003eCrush\u003c\/i\u003e, that received the 2004 Yale Younger Poets Prize and has since been passed around by countless writers like a totem). The 77 prose poems in this book reckon with love and memory and personal connection, but most of all with language and its loss. 'There were few nouns. They wouldn't connect, ' Siken writes in one poem. In another: 'I tried to say it completely. I said it as plain as I could.\"--\u003cb\u003eJohn Maher, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \"Favorite Hidden Gem Books of 2025\"\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"As Siken relearns nouns and verbs, the associations his mind makes (calling a waitress a \"restaurant nurse,\" or a forest a \"box of leaves,\" or saying \"dark tree\" instead of night) are not playful rearrangements of language crafted for poetic effect; his words misfire. In the hospital, \"dark-struck, slumber-felt, sleep-clogged,\" he is angry, lost, and confused by his inability to communicate with the doctors and nurses. Readers, by contrast, can recognize the symbolism of these slippages. When he perceives a doorknob as \"a rock for the hand,\" something fundamental about his processing of the world remains.\"--\u003cb\u003eRayna Salam, \u003ci\u003ePublic Seminar\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"[These poems'] subject matter includes messy family legacies, mental breakdowns, cults, sex, the medical establishment and murder. In their propulsiveness, narrative strategies and image-making, they are frequently startling.\"--\u003cb\u003eChris Power, \u003ci\u003eThe Observer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In 2019, Siken suffered a serious stroke, an event he uses as a way of thinking about memory, loss and language itself: 'I was having trouble with my tenses - is, was, will be - and things were getting lost in the overlap.' The slipperiness of the subject, loquacious, implacable and revelatory, asks us to delight in the lie as an honest riposte to a private life lived in public view.\"--\u003cb\u003eSandeep Parmar, \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for Richard Siken\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"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.\"--\u003cb\u003eLouise Glück, from the Foreword to \u003ci\u003eCrush\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"If we think about \u003ci\u003eCrush\u003c\/i\u003e as an extended elegy, then we can think about \u003ci\u003eWar of the Foxes\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\"--\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSoutheast Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"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, \u0026amp; maybe you have, but you weren't the same person then, \u0026amp; you aren't the same person now.\"--\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAdroit Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"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.\"--\u003cb\u003eVictoria Chang, \u003ci\u003eHuffington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Richard Siken's \u003ci\u003eCrush\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\"--\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eMinnesota Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eWar of the Foxes\u003c\/i\u003e builds upon the lush and frantic magic of Richard Siken's first book, \u003ci\u003eCrush\u003c\/i\u003e. 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.\"--\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Rumpus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003c\/table\u003e\n","brand":"Copper Canyon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51496031486230,"sku":"9781556596247","price":26.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0857\/9910\/8886\/files\/9781556596247.jpg?v=1783051138","url":"https:\/\/lusper.myshopify.com\/products\/i-do-know-some-things","provider":"Lusperbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}