Siken paints and erases – the metaphor of painting with words allows him to leave those traces that mostly go unseen. No separation, fallacy of the local body, paint Thick and rude and imaginary because there is

His outsides kept apart with an imaginary line –– Boundaries blur and shift under our scrutiny, or when we forget to look, or are torn away for a moment, or when the paint is applied unfaithfully. Here is the world –and we navigate it – paint it/write it –through our personal understanding of the integrity of its boundaries. What we get to work with is this paint – or these words.

The paint doesn’t move the way the light reflects, The title of the first poem – “The way the light reflects “ – sets the stage, and Siken begins: Most of the titles of the poems suggest titles of paintings. Siken is a painter, and in War of the Foxes he lays bare if/then’s that lurk under the surface of writing poetry by paralleling those he confronts as a painter. If you don’t believe in the world it would be Some people like to hear the sound of their own The best part of spirituality is reverence. This could be the definition of painting. Raphael was trying to say something about This has nothing to do with faith but is still a good So, while I don’t necessarily mean religious or spiritual transformation, I can’t rule it out.Īn evil thing, do you invoke it or take away its power? By transformation, I mean the transformation that takes place when boundaries are blurred and membranes are breached. Louise Glück said in her forward to Crush: “This is a book about panic.” If Crush was about panic, then War of the Foxes is about transformation. In this second book (due out in April 2015 with Copper Canyon Press), Siken takes breathtaking control of the rich, varied material he has chosen. War of the Foxes builds upon the lush and frantic magic of Richard Siken’s first book, Crush.

Best richard siken poems