Book of the Week: I DO KNOW SOME THINGS by Richard Siken
Following a stroke that was initially mistaken for a panic attack, the poet Richard Siken found himself having to completely rebuild his relationship with his body, with his world, and with language itself — the medium that previously had come most naturally to him. This wonderful, darkly hilarious book, both vitriolic and tender, began as a series of exploratory and explanatory survival notes to himself and built into a series of playful interrogations of memories, traumas and losses, a pinning of personal phantoms, a renegotiation of the contract between inner and outer worlds, and an unfurling of new and vulnerable possibilities in language and in life. Recommended.
"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