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I Do Know Some Things

Richard Siken

$29.99

Paperback

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English
Chatto & Windus
26 March 2026
A collection of pitch-perfect prose poems written in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophic stroke. From the author of cult poetry bestseller, Crush

'A spectacular comeback' Jeremy Noel Tod, Prospect 'Siken's signature intensity still throbs between sentences' The Yale Review

A collection of pitch-perfect prose poems written in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophic stroke. From the author of cult poetry bestseller, Crush. Richard Siken's Crush was an underground international sensation. Twenty years on, he returns with the momentous I Do Know Some Things, cinematic in its tragic vision and emotive force.

In the aftermath of a stroke, the poet's language and much of his memory is, for a time, wiped out. As his mind gropes its way back from oblivion, the scenery flickers between memories of a ruptured childhood and queer coming-of-age, and the precipice of the present. Each poem is a room in a 'house owned by ghosts'.

In these seventy-seven prose poems, Siken has forged a new voice at once terrifying and vital. Brave in content and in method, I Do Know Some Things demands his recognition as an essential poet of our times.

'Thrums with reinvention- of the self, of the prose poem, of the false divide between the everyday and the surreal' Andrew McMillan

Praise for Crush-

'Cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power' Louise Gl ck

'The immense wingspan of influence that Crush has on 21st-century American poetry cannot be overstated' Ocean Vuong
By:  
Imprint:   Chatto & Windus
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 214mm,  Width: 135mm,  Spine: 12mm
Weight:   146g
ISBN:   9781784746629
ISBN 10:   1784746622
Pages:   128
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  ELT Advanced ,  Primary
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Richard Siken is a poet and painter. His book Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, selected by Louise Gl ck, 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 and I Do Know Some Things, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Siken lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Reviews for I Do Know Some Things

'What happens when language is let into places where words fail? Here, a transportive experience: naked, vertiginous, defiant — an astonishing illumination of the possibilities in being beside oneself' * Jeremy Atherton Lin, author of Deep House * 'This is writing as rebuilding, each sentence placed unwaveringly on the page. . .Siken is a deadpan virtuoso of the wrongfooting observation, his prose flickering between confessions. . . A spectacular comeback' -- Jeremy Noel-Tod * Prospect * 'A remarkable return that thrums with reinvention: of the self, of the prose poem, of the false divide between the everyday and the surreal. Very engaging and exciting’ * Andrew McMillan * 'Siken’s signature intensity still throbs between sentences. . .In I Do Know Some Things, the risk is not that of desire, as it is in Crush, but that of a different annihilating force: the vanishing of a self' * Richie Hofmann, The Yale Review *


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