I was seventeen, and I didn’t understand my own body, much less like living in it enough to consider writing poetry that acknowledged my doing so. I was obsessed with Robert Frost, and, like him, preferred landscapes to portraits. In addition to that, I hadn’t grown to love poetry where bodies are involved the way I do now. The words were powerful but in isolation they didn’t invoke the same feeling they do from knowing the context of the rest of the poem. Or rather, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I’m willing to admit that when I first encountered Siken’s work via ‘aesthetic’ posts on tumblr, I didn’t like it. Also, I’m one of those people who will sit and read through a collection of poetry like it’s a novel, which is fun because absorbing all the words in one sitting can and does often feel like being hit with a train on an emotional level.
I enjoy being able to return to books to see what changes in the way I encounter them. This month brings the turn of the author, which thankfully coincides with my having just finished Crush by Richard Siken for the third time in the last five years. My current plan with the format of this blog is to alternate vague concepts and authors/collectives until I run out of one or the other to talk about. It matters to me and that’s the whole point. I’m trying to stop agonising over whether anything I put on this blog is worth anything the reality is that it doesn’t have to.
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