Crush

Recipient of the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, which is America’s oldest annual literary award, Richard Skien makes a powerful and impassioned debut with “Crush.” In this provocative collection, he offers the reader poems driven by obession and brimming with violent eroticism. With recurring themes of the coming-of-age of boyhood sexuality, Siken’s eloquent verse works to induce a dizzing collision of words. Introduced with a foreword by past poet laureateLouise Gluck, “Crush” presents the promising debut of a fresh voice in poetry. Richard Siken is the recipient of a Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment of Arts, and editor of the literary magazine, “spork.”