He said he’d avoid meeting Siken just to “protect” the way he views the book. In discussing CRUSH recently with a friend, we realized we both place this book on a pedestal and don’t want anything to “ruin” it. Its readers are like devout patriots to an under siege country. The book feels like it could save your life, and so you’d die for it, too. There is an emphatic dedication to CRUSH by his readers (myself included), as though it’s a prophet to the fringe, the addicted, the self-destructive. Regardless of this story’s validity, Siken’s collection CRUSH, selected for the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, is tinged with this seediness his book is the celebrity, not him. Her boyfriend told Siken, but what was he supposed to do with that? The same sort of guilt by association placed on Marilyn Manson after Columbine. It’s rumored a woman used Richard Siken’s poem “Scheherazade” as her suicide note. One of those: CRUSH by Richard Siken, a collection of poems about obsession and love. As we continue stocking the shelves during our soft opening, more and more of the titles we love are arriving in the store.
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