A Critical Analysis of Richard Siken’s Crush
Crush by Richard Siken is a phenomenal collection of poems that uses confessionalism to explore the speaker 's experiences with love and homosexuality. Siken uses strong imagery and diction to discuss the themes of abuse, love, and violence throughout the collection. For this essay I chose to analyze two of Siken’s poems “ A Primer for the Small Weird Loves” and “The torn-up road” . In both poems Siken is able to convey very powerful messages, and he uses his poetic ability to transform so much violence and abuse into beautiful art in the form of poetry.
“ A Primer for the Small Weird Loves” epitomizes the struggle of a coming of age gay man/boy. Siken uses a combination of strong diction, …show more content…
He talks about a dark-haired man in a rented bungalow and how he doesn’t really care about him. He describes their encounter as “ After everything that was going to happen has happened/ you ask only for the cab fare home”. His tone here is very nonchalant and that mirrors how he feels about this lover and how the lover feels about him. The next lover he talks about is a man on top of him that is teaching him to hate. The is a lot of violence between them and he uses a lot of strong words with negative connotations to describe the violence. He says “ Kissing degenerates to biting/ so you get a kidney punch, a little blood in your urine/ it isn’t over yet, it 's just begun.” His relationship with this lover is very violent and they are both only using each other for …show more content…
The poem is divided into numbered stanzas and each of the stanzas indicate a different event. Each of these events narrate a circumstance in which the speaker dealt with love, violence, sex , and the disadvantages that came with being homosexual. To the speaker he doesn’t deserve to be in love because he was gay, and the only love he knows is almost synonymous to violence and he clearly expresses this in each of the stanzas. The speaker says “ He hits you and he hits and he hits you/ desire driving his hands right into your body” He blames himself for the misfortune that came with him being in “love” he goes on to say “ you wanted to think of yourself as someone who did these kinds of things/ you wanted to be in
Crush by Richard Siken is a phenomenal collection of poems that uses confessionalism to explore the speaker 's experiences with love and homosexuality. Siken uses strong imagery and diction to discuss the themes of abuse, love, and violence throughout the collection. For this essay I chose to analyze two of Siken’s poems “ A Primer for the Small Weird Loves” and “The torn-up road” . In both poems Siken is able to convey very powerful messages, and he uses his poetic ability to transform so much violence and abuse into beautiful art in the form of poetry.
“ A Primer for the Small Weird Loves” epitomizes the struggle of a coming of age gay man/boy. Siken uses a combination of strong diction, …show more content…
He talks about a dark-haired man in a rented bungalow and how he doesn’t really care about him. He describes their encounter as “ After everything that was going to happen has happened/ you ask only for the cab fare home”. His tone here is very nonchalant and that mirrors how he feels about this lover and how the lover feels about him. The next lover he talks about is a man on top of him that is teaching him to hate. The is a lot of violence between them and he uses a lot of strong words with negative connotations to describe the violence. He says “ Kissing degenerates to biting/ so you get a kidney punch, a little blood in your urine/ it isn’t over yet, it 's just begun.” His relationship with this lover is very violent and they are both only using each other for …show more content…
The poem is divided into numbered stanzas and each of the stanzas indicate a different event. Each of these events narrate a circumstance in which the speaker dealt with love, violence, sex , and the disadvantages that came with being homosexual. To the speaker he doesn’t deserve to be in love because he was gay, and the only love he knows is almost synonymous to violence and he clearly expresses this in each of the stanzas. The speaker says “ He hits you and he hits and he hits you/ desire driving his hands right into your body” He blames himself for the misfortune that came with him being in “love” he goes on to say “ you wanted to think of yourself as someone who did these kinds of things/ you wanted to be in