I Do Know Some Things is a brave book, both in content and method.
It is brave to write about childhood scars and the heartbreak the dead leave behind. It is brave to reconfigure one's life in the aftermath of a stroke. Richard Siken presents these subjects directly, without ornament, and with nothing to hide behind, confronting the fact that he can no longer manipulate the constructions of form, or speak lies that tell the truth. In spite of these limitations, Siken chooses to write these poems and release them into a dangerous world. Each image, each sentence, is as direct as the American artist Jasper Johns's shooting targets. Each poem is like a small room in a house, a room where you will be punched in the throat. As he claws himself back into a self, into a body, Siken has written a book that is unsettling and autobiographical by necessity, and its seventy-seven prose poems invite the reader to risk a difficult intimacy in search of yet deeper truths.
About the Author :
Richard Siken is a poet, painter, and filmmaker. His book Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, selected by Louise Glck, a Lambda Literary Award, a Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books are War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) and I Do Know Some Things (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.
Review :
Praise for I Do Know Some Things
“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.”—Mandana Chaffa, Chicago Review of Books
“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.”—Ciara Shuttleworth, UCLA Radiation Oncology Journal
“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.”—Christopher Nelson, Under a Warm Green Linden
“If Hollywood ever takes an interest in 21st-century American poetry, my money would be on the life and work of Richard Siken. . . . I Do Know Some Things 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.”—Jeremy Noel-Tod, Prospect Magazine
“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.”—C. Francis Fisher, Los Angeles Review of Books
“The second-person strategies of Crush are abandoned in I Do Know Some Things 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.”—Richie Hoffman, Yale Review
“One of the most striking aspects of I Do Know Some Things 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.”—Raquel Gutiérrez, Poetry Foundation
“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.”—Electric Lit, Best Poetry Collections of 2025
“Regardless of the style, Siken maintains a confessional approach: Driving all his work is the urge to externalize something suppressed—in Crush, through a frenzied release of emotion and longing, and in I Do Know Some Things, 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 I Do Know Some Things he has made it true, as he relinquishes control over the inner life he once so closely guarded.”—Yvonne Kim, Nation
“It’s no exaggeration to call this book 'long awaited.' I Do Know Some Things 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.”—David Starkey, California Review of Books
Praise for Richard Siken
“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.”—Louise Glück, from the Foreword to Crush
“If we think about Crush as an extended elegy, then we can think about War of the Foxes 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.”—Southeast Review
“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, & maybe you have, but you weren’t the same person then, & you aren’t the same person now.”—Adroit Journal
"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."—Victoria Chang, Huffington Post
“Richard Siken’s Crush 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.”—Minnesota Review
"War of the Foxes builds upon the lush and frantic magic of Richard Siken's first book, Crush. 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."—The Rumpus
