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War of the Foxes
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Poetry (2015)In this long-awaited follow-up to Crush, Yale Series of Younger Poets prize-winner Richard Siken turns toward the problems of making and representation, in an unrelenting interrogation of our world of doublings. In this restless, swerving book simple questions—such as, Why paint a bird?—are immediately complicated by concerns of morality, human capacity, and the ways we look to art for meaning and purpose while participating in its—and our own—invention.
49 pages, Paperback
First published April 28, 2015
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About the author
Richard Siken
11 books3,640 followersRichard Siken is an American poet, painter, and filmmaker. His poetry collection Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, a Lambda Literary Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, Conjunctions, Indiana Review and Forklift, Ohio, as well as in the anthologies The Best American Poetry 2000 and Legitimate Dangers. He is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, two Arizona Commission on the Arts grants, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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April 10, 2024
‘I turned / the image over like a rock, but then the worms.’
If existential anxiety wrote poetry, I suspect it would read a lot like Richard Siken. War of the Foxes, Siken’s second collection after a 10 year gap, is a minor masterpiece that is a feast for the mind and heart to untangle the philosophical quandaries, profuse self-doubt and abstract beauty that culminate in these breathtaking poems. This collection expertly straddles emotional resonance and academic musings, while blending the aesthetics of poetry with painting and theoretical mathematics across works that employ painting as metaphor for existential examinations and ekphrastic poems. With superb imagery and ideas that frequently use the moon, ghosts and the number zero to open the gateways of thought, Siken looks at the inevitability of death, our destructive tendencies, our desire to create and the solipsism surrounding that impluse. ‘The paint doesn't move the way the light reflects, / so what's there to be faithful to? he asks as his opening lines of the collection in The Way Light Reflects about the frailty of art to capture life, ‘it should be enough. To make something / beautiful should be enough.’ Through this collection, whatever depth of abstract reality and human anxiety he may probe, Siken proves that, yes, the beauty is enough.
‘Paint all the men you want but sooner or
later they go to ground and rot. The mind fights the
body and the body fights the land. It wants our bodies,
the landscape does, and everyone runs the risk of
being swallowed up. Can we love nature for what it
really is: predatory? We do not walk through a passive
landscape. The paint dries eventually. The bodies
decompose eventually. We collide with place, which
is another name for God, and limp away with a
permanent injury. Ask for a blessing? You can try,
but we will not remain unscathed.’
from Landscape with Fruit Rot and Millipede
Much of the collection questions the relationship between life and the representations of it, be it how we attempt to corral meaning through art, math, or various philosophies. We can try to capture it this way ‘but the meaning was slippery,’ and the paint dries before perfection. He continues this theme in poems such as Three Proofs where he asks if Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein can truly capture her essence, looking at the artists dilemma of ‘wanting to show but not being able.’
‘Measure yourself against truth and not the other way around.’
However, he also argues that ‘truth doesn’t count / in law, only proof,’ and many poems look at how truth is often a construct in a subjective reality whereas death is the only certainty. ‘A hammer is a hammer when it hits the nail,’ he writes in Logic, looking at the way our truths are often prescribing a use function in order to concentrate what an idea or object is. Art, as seen in many of the poems, is the tool we use to try and encompass an idea, often abstractly as in poetry, just as math is. His frequent uses of the number zero, showing how something can exist in non-existance, or his references to the square root of negative one to produce an imaginary number (i), show how abstraction exists even in something seen as so concrete. ‘Grant be freedom from objects, says the painting,’ he says in Landscape with Several Small Fires, highlighting how sometimes we find more truth in the abstract. And sometimes there is no meaning, only sheer reality working on its own, as when he write ‘people like to think war means something.’ The idea of meaninglessness is terrifying, and perhaps that is why we create, to push back non-existence and leave our subjective meaning imprinted on the world.
This collection is a stunning achievement looking at ‘all these things and what we do with them. / We carve up the world all the time.’ It has some perfect lines, with gems like ‘When you have nothing to say, set something on fire’ or titles such as The Worm King’s Lullaby that you could easily see finding their way into some indie band’s albums. Siken is amazing and I love this collection, its one that reward the reread as you discover more every time. Also shoutout to friends who recommend good poetry.
5/5
The Story of the Moon
Once, night, unchallenged, extended its dark grace
across the sky. To the credit of the town, the stars
at night had been enough, though sometimes
the townspeople went about bumping their heads
in sleep. Eventually, three brothers, traveling through
a foreign town, found an evening that did not
disappear behind the mountains, for a shining globe
sat in an oak tree. The brothers stopped. That one
is the moon, said a man from the foreign town.
The brothers conferred. They could make a certain use
of it. The brothers stole the moon down and put it
in their wagon. Seized it. Thieved its silver. Altogether
greedy. The wagon shining brights. At home:
the moon delivered. Then, celebration: dancing in red
coats on the meadow. Number four brother smiling
wide. The moon installed--it extended its silver
calculations. Time and more time. The brothers aged,
took sick, petitioned the town that each quarter
of the moon, as it was their property, be portioned out
to share their graves. Done, and the light of the moon
diminished in fractions. They had extinguished it,
part for part, and night, unimpeded, fell. Altogether
lanternless. The people were silent. The dark rang loud.
Underground: cold blazing. The dead woke, shivering
in the light. Some went out to play and dance,
others hastened to the taverns to drink, quarrel,
and brawl. Noise and more noise. Noise up to heaven.
Saint Peter took his red horse through the gates
and came down. The moon, for the third time, taken.
The dead bidden back into their graves. One wonders
why a story like this exists.
If existential anxiety wrote poetry, I suspect it would read a lot like Richard Siken. War of the Foxes, Siken’s second collection after a 10 year gap, is a minor masterpiece that is a feast for the mind and heart to untangle the philosophical quandaries, profuse self-doubt and abstract beauty that culminate in these breathtaking poems. This collection expertly straddles emotional resonance and academic musings, while blending the aesthetics of poetry with painting and theoretical mathematics across works that employ painting as metaphor for existential examinations and ekphrastic poems. With superb imagery and ideas that frequently use the moon, ghosts and the number zero to open the gateways of thought, Siken looks at the inevitability of death, our destructive tendencies, our desire to create and the solipsism surrounding that impluse. ‘The paint doesn't move the way the light reflects, / so what's there to be faithful to? he asks as his opening lines of the collection in The Way Light Reflects about the frailty of art to capture life, ‘it should be enough. To make something / beautiful should be enough.’ Through this collection, whatever depth of abstract reality and human anxiety he may probe, Siken proves that, yes, the beauty is enough.
‘Paint all the men you want but sooner or
later they go to ground and rot. The mind fights the
body and the body fights the land. It wants our bodies,
the landscape does, and everyone runs the risk of
being swallowed up. Can we love nature for what it
really is: predatory? We do not walk through a passive
landscape. The paint dries eventually. The bodies
decompose eventually. We collide with place, which
is another name for God, and limp away with a
permanent injury. Ask for a blessing? You can try,
but we will not remain unscathed.’
from Landscape with Fruit Rot and Millipede
Much of the collection questions the relationship between life and the representations of it, be it how we attempt to corral meaning through art, math, or various philosophies. We can try to capture it this way ‘but the meaning was slippery,’ and the paint dries before perfection. He continues this theme in poems such as Three Proofs where he asks if Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein can truly capture her essence, looking at the artists dilemma of ‘wanting to show but not being able.’
‘Measure yourself against truth and not the other way around.’
However, he also argues that ‘truth doesn’t count / in law, only proof,’ and many poems look at how truth is often a construct in a subjective reality whereas death is the only certainty. ‘A hammer is a hammer when it hits the nail,’ he writes in Logic, looking at the way our truths are often prescribing a use function in order to concentrate what an idea or object is. Art, as seen in many of the poems, is the tool we use to try and encompass an idea, often abstractly as in poetry, just as math is. His frequent uses of the number zero, showing how something can exist in non-existance, or his references to the square root of negative one to produce an imaginary number (i), show how abstraction exists even in something seen as so concrete. ‘Grant be freedom from objects, says the painting,’ he says in Landscape with Several Small Fires, highlighting how sometimes we find more truth in the abstract. And sometimes there is no meaning, only sheer reality working on its own, as when he write ‘people like to think war means something.’ The idea of meaninglessness is terrifying, and perhaps that is why we create, to push back non-existence and leave our subjective meaning imprinted on the world.
This collection is a stunning achievement looking at ‘all these things and what we do with them. / We carve up the world all the time.’ It has some perfect lines, with gems like ‘When you have nothing to say, set something on fire’ or titles such as The Worm King’s Lullaby that you could easily see finding their way into some indie band’s albums. Siken is amazing and I love this collection, its one that reward the reread as you discover more every time. Also shoutout to friends who recommend good poetry.
5/5
The Story of the Moon
Once, night, unchallenged, extended its dark grace
across the sky. To the credit of the town, the stars
at night had been enough, though sometimes
the townspeople went about bumping their heads
in sleep. Eventually, three brothers, traveling through
a foreign town, found an evening that did not
disappear behind the mountains, for a shining globe
sat in an oak tree. The brothers stopped. That one
is the moon, said a man from the foreign town.
The brothers conferred. They could make a certain use
of it. The brothers stole the moon down and put it
in their wagon. Seized it. Thieved its silver. Altogether
greedy. The wagon shining brights. At home:
the moon delivered. Then, celebration: dancing in red
coats on the meadow. Number four brother smiling
wide. The moon installed--it extended its silver
calculations. Time and more time. The brothers aged,
took sick, petitioned the town that each quarter
of the moon, as it was their property, be portioned out
to share their graves. Done, and the light of the moon
diminished in fractions. They had extinguished it,
part for part, and night, unimpeded, fell. Altogether
lanternless. The people were silent. The dark rang loud.
Underground: cold blazing. The dead woke, shivering
in the light. Some went out to play and dance,
others hastened to the taverns to drink, quarrel,
and brawl. Noise and more noise. Noise up to heaven.
Saint Peter took his red horse through the gates
and came down. The moon, for the third time, taken.
The dead bidden back into their graves. One wonders
why a story like this exists.
June 9, 2017
god, god, god, why did i read this with my pdf of crush open?
but, no, really - they really do belong together. crush we all loved because it was rife with longing and reeking of desperation, because all of his poems went back to the same thread of wanting. war of the foxes is that slightly lonely aftermath, especially in the beginning, and because it's not circling the same yearning that crush had, its poems are more - i don't want to say scatterbrained, because they're not, but the poems cover a wider breadth of topics even though it may take a few poems later for you to get the whole picture of what siken is saying, much like a painter adding more and more details until you finally see the real subject of the work (the progression of "everyone needs a place" wrecked me completely). i've heard it described as much more "cerebral" than crush, and it really is - it seems to demand that you read with a pencil in hand, which i did. it really is the aftermath of crush, really, not only in the way siken's matured in the way he sets up the stories his poems tell but also in the topics themselves - that feeling after you're not really in love but you're not really out of wanting to be in love with someone and you're all too aware of being a singular unit alone, the struggling to create when you're not quite sure art is meaningful and you're not quite sure what to create that would be meaningful, and the knowledge that even if you think about all this there's still a huge gap between thought and action and the action that you see in the world today doesn't comfort you at all anyway.
it's much less quotable than crush - crush is full of sucker punch-type lines, whereas war of the foxes is much more sweeping brushstrokes that hit you more in the context of the greater work - but it's devastating in its own subtle lovely way, especially read all at once like i just did. (and i also get the nagging feeling with the ending of war of the foxes that it hints at a sort of cycling back to the same emotional state crush had, which has all sorts of possibilities i'm not eloquent enough to say quite yet). anyway. highly recommended, as always.
but, no, really - they really do belong together. crush we all loved because it was rife with longing and reeking of desperation, because all of his poems went back to the same thread of wanting. war of the foxes is that slightly lonely aftermath, especially in the beginning, and because it's not circling the same yearning that crush had, its poems are more - i don't want to say scatterbrained, because they're not, but the poems cover a wider breadth of topics even though it may take a few poems later for you to get the whole picture of what siken is saying, much like a painter adding more and more details until you finally see the real subject of the work (the progression of "everyone needs a place" wrecked me completely). i've heard it described as much more "cerebral" than crush, and it really is - it seems to demand that you read with a pencil in hand, which i did. it really is the aftermath of crush, really, not only in the way siken's matured in the way he sets up the stories his poems tell but also in the topics themselves - that feeling after you're not really in love but you're not really out of wanting to be in love with someone and you're all too aware of being a singular unit alone, the struggling to create when you're not quite sure art is meaningful and you're not quite sure what to create that would be meaningful, and the knowledge that even if you think about all this there's still a huge gap between thought and action and the action that you see in the world today doesn't comfort you at all anyway.
it's much less quotable than crush - crush is full of sucker punch-type lines, whereas war of the foxes is much more sweeping brushstrokes that hit you more in the context of the greater work - but it's devastating in its own subtle lovely way, especially read all at once like i just did. (and i also get the nagging feeling with the ending of war of the foxes that it hints at a sort of cycling back to the same emotional state crush had, which has all sorts of possibilities i'm not eloquent enough to say quite yet). anyway. highly recommended, as always.
May 25, 2015
This rating is probably slightly higher than it should be if I were being honest with myself, but Richard Siken's first book, Crush, is one of the best things I've ever read by anybody and very important to me, so I can't fathom taking away more than one star from him.
At any rate, I was obviously eagerly anticipating this, and I have to admit it didn't quite live up to my (admittedly lofty) expectations. Let me be clear about one thing: it's really not anything at all like Crush, except that Siken's writing is as precise and musical and exquisite as ever. What I love so much about Crush is the heart-wrenching specificity of the emotions and experiences expressed within its poems; reading one is like being stabbed repeatedly in the heart and then coming back for more despite the throbbing pain of it all because it just hurts so damn good.
So maybe it's for the best that War of the Foxes isn't nearly as violently emotional. Still, I wanted it to be. I couldn't help feeling that most of the poems here were far too generalized, relying more upon sweeping revelations about emotions rather than smaller, more personalized experiences that actually convey those emotions. In several cases, Siken gets away with it because of his exceptional talent for putting words together in devastatingly beautiful ways and his penchant for pulling out powerful one-liners when you least expect it. In others, though, I found myself struggling to find meaning to grasp onto in poems that seemed purposefully and frustratingly abstruse. Still, I appreciate the skill and discipline it must have taken to put these poems together. Most of them are obviously connected by running themes, particularly the use of painting as a metaphor for real world concerns, and the attention to detail in achieving such connections is quite remarkable. But, occasionally, it also leads to an emotional distance that wasn't present in Siken's earlier work.
All that being said, I would absolutely still recommend this book to anyone looking for top-tier contemporary poetry, as there's a lot to learn from and admire in Siken's work. Particular favorites here: "The Way the Light Reflects," "Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors," "War of the Foxes," "Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light," and "The Story of the Moon."
At any rate, I was obviously eagerly anticipating this, and I have to admit it didn't quite live up to my (admittedly lofty) expectations. Let me be clear about one thing: it's really not anything at all like Crush, except that Siken's writing is as precise and musical and exquisite as ever. What I love so much about Crush is the heart-wrenching specificity of the emotions and experiences expressed within its poems; reading one is like being stabbed repeatedly in the heart and then coming back for more despite the throbbing pain of it all because it just hurts so damn good.
So maybe it's for the best that War of the Foxes isn't nearly as violently emotional. Still, I wanted it to be. I couldn't help feeling that most of the poems here were far too generalized, relying more upon sweeping revelations about emotions rather than smaller, more personalized experiences that actually convey those emotions. In several cases, Siken gets away with it because of his exceptional talent for putting words together in devastatingly beautiful ways and his penchant for pulling out powerful one-liners when you least expect it. In others, though, I found myself struggling to find meaning to grasp onto in poems that seemed purposefully and frustratingly abstruse. Still, I appreciate the skill and discipline it must have taken to put these poems together. Most of them are obviously connected by running themes, particularly the use of painting as a metaphor for real world concerns, and the attention to detail in achieving such connections is quite remarkable. But, occasionally, it also leads to an emotional distance that wasn't present in Siken's earlier work.
All that being said, I would absolutely still recommend this book to anyone looking for top-tier contemporary poetry, as there's a lot to learn from and admire in Siken's work. Particular favorites here: "The Way the Light Reflects," "Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors," "War of the Foxes," "Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light," and "The Story of the Moon."
November 14, 2020
"Everyone needs a place. It shouldn’t be inside of someone else."
"Am I the ghost at the end of the song? We are very close now, Little Moon. Thank you for shining on me.
He was pointing at the moon but I was looking at his hand. He was dead anyway, a ghost. I’m surprised I saw his hand at all. All this was prepared for me. All this was set in motion long ago. I live in someone else’s future. I stayed as long as I could, he said. Now look at the moon."
it's abt grief & death & lost love but still, it's somehow so very calming?
"Am I the ghost at the end of the song? We are very close now, Little Moon. Thank you for shining on me.
He was pointing at the moon but I was looking at his hand. He was dead anyway, a ghost. I’m surprised I saw his hand at all. All this was prepared for me. All this was set in motion long ago. I live in someone else’s future. I stayed as long as I could, he said. Now look at the moon."
it's abt grief & death & lost love but still, it's somehow so very calming?
December 20, 2022
can u believe i lasted like over eight whole months without rereading it me neither. anyways self-portrait against red wallpaper has no business calling me out like that i want to punch something every time i read it
___________________
HE WAS SO SICK FOR THIS
___________________
________________
i will never love a poem more than i love the language of the birds
________________
I am speechless
___________________
HE WAS SO SICK FOR THIS
___________________
"Sometimes, at night, in bed, before I fall asleep, I think about a poem I might write, someday, about my heart, says the heart."
________________
i will never love a poem more than i love the language of the birds
________________
I am speechless
March 7, 2023
"How much can you change and get away with it before you turn into someone else, before it's some kind of murder ?"
why do i even bother to talk or to exteriorise my thoughts when Richard Siken did it all for me years ago ?
why do i even bother to talk or to exteriorise my thoughts when Richard Siken did it all for me years ago ?
October 29, 2023
"I clawed my way into the light but the light is just as scary. I’d rather quit. I’d rather be sad. It’s too much work.”
The poems in this collection are often difficult to read, but they are also incredibly rewarding.
Finally found someone who literally loves to take risks, something I really appreciate about Siken's poems. The way he has experimented with language and form is very visible throughout his poems, pushing the boundaries of what is considered "acceptable" in poetry.
The poems in this collection are often difficult to read, but they are also incredibly rewarding.
Finally found someone who literally loves to take risks, something I really appreciate about Siken's poems. The way he has experimented with language and form is very visible throughout his poems, pushing the boundaries of what is considered "acceptable" in poetry.
May 8, 2016
While this collection started off on a fairly strong note, it began fragmenting early on, disintegrating into a repetitive series of empty words and images. This is the exact type of self-referential, intentionally clever poetic trap that I so heartily praised Crush for resisting. It's particularly disappointing because Siken's first collection was so exceptional. These poems feel as though they were written by an entirely different person; I had to flip to the back cover several times to double-check that this was, in fact, the same Richard Siken whose words scorched through me just one night earlier.
That fire that couldn't be extinguished in the poems that make up Crush has, in the intervening years, been enclosed in a room with all the oxygen sucked out of it. Reading War of the Foxes felt like watching a mind come unhinged and collapse in on itself. They're words, words, meaningless words that fall from the sky and collect in disjointed piles, a toppled tower of faded children's blocks with "war" and "soldiers" and "moon" and "paint" carved into the sides.
There's no personality or heart in this volume. Everything that made Crush astonishingly urgent and personal has been stripped away. It reads like a descent into an inescapable depression, where the words lose their meaning and cycle in on themselves - aptly described in "The Worm King's Lullaby" as pages on a dead man's desk, "esoteric and unfollowable, written with perfect penmanship and a total disregard for any reader."
My first impulse upon flipping the final page was to check on Siken's well-being. This is a collection that's gone rotten at the core. Is it a cry for help, or simply the result of too many self-indulgent, passionless years? It's a series of poems with no pleasure in them, but no pain, either.
"You want it to mean something," he writes in "Glue," yet fails - perhaps intentionally? - at sticking any of it into a semblance of meaning. He closes "The Story of the Moon" with: "One wonders why a story like this exists," and I found myself slapping the book closed and hissing at it in agreement. I do wonder what the point of this collection is, or if the message is that there isn't even a tale full of sound and fury left to be relayed - merely an empty room filled with hollow words.
That fire that couldn't be extinguished in the poems that make up Crush has, in the intervening years, been enclosed in a room with all the oxygen sucked out of it. Reading War of the Foxes felt like watching a mind come unhinged and collapse in on itself. They're words, words, meaningless words that fall from the sky and collect in disjointed piles, a toppled tower of faded children's blocks with "war" and "soldiers" and "moon" and "paint" carved into the sides.
There's no personality or heart in this volume. Everything that made Crush astonishingly urgent and personal has been stripped away. It reads like a descent into an inescapable depression, where the words lose their meaning and cycle in on themselves - aptly described in "The Worm King's Lullaby" as pages on a dead man's desk, "esoteric and unfollowable, written with perfect penmanship and a total disregard for any reader."
My first impulse upon flipping the final page was to check on Siken's well-being. This is a collection that's gone rotten at the core. Is it a cry for help, or simply the result of too many self-indulgent, passionless years? It's a series of poems with no pleasure in them, but no pain, either.
"You want it to mean something," he writes in "Glue," yet fails - perhaps intentionally? - at sticking any of it into a semblance of meaning. He closes "The Story of the Moon" with: "One wonders why a story like this exists," and I found myself slapping the book closed and hissing at it in agreement. I do wonder what the point of this collection is, or if the message is that there isn't even a tale full of sound and fury left to be relayed - merely an empty room filled with hollow words.
November 16, 2023
3.5
“Take a body, dump it, drive. Take a body, maybe your own, and dump it gently. All your dead, unfinished selves and dump them gently. Take only what you need.”
-Birds Hover the Trampled Field
“I clawed my way into the light, but the light is just as scary. I’d rather quit, I’d rather be sad. It’s too much work.”
-Self-Portrait Against Red Wallpaper
Poems of self-discovery and growth. It really is the aftermath of Crush.
“Take a body, dump it, drive. Take a body, maybe your own, and dump it gently. All your dead, unfinished selves and dump them gently. Take only what you need.”
-Birds Hover the Trampled Field
“I clawed my way into the light, but the light is just as scary. I’d rather quit, I’d rather be sad. It’s too much work.”
-Self-Portrait Against Red Wallpaper
Poems of self-discovery and growth. It really is the aftermath of Crush.
December 8, 2021
shaking and crying and throwing up
February 9, 2017
Hook and bait,
polestar and checkmate, I am your arrival,
there is no
refusal, we are here, you see, together, we are already here.
I don't like to review poetry, so I'll just talk a little bit about this one.
Richard Siken is my favorite poet. His first collection, Crush, was the first poetry book I felt truly able to connect with. There's something about the way he describes his passions and his losses, so raw and beautifully, that made me feel almost transcendent. So it was hard for me to rate this, because I kept comparing it to Crush. And both collections are extremely good, but very different, and it's not fair of me to compare anything to Crush because I have very strong emotions attached to that book and I don't think nothing will ever compare.
But this was still so beautiful, and I want everyone to read it. Siken's words are mesmerizing.
Some of my favorites parts:
Let's admit, without apology, what we do to each other.
We know who our enemies are. We know.
If you don't believe in the world it would be stupid to paint it. If you don't believe in God,
then who
are you talking to?
Fox rounds the warren but there are no bunnies, jumps up with claws but there are no bunnies, moves down the road but there are no bunnies. There are no bunnies. He chases a bird instead. All wars are the same war. The bird flies away.
The world doesn't know
what do with my love. Because it isn't used to
being loved.
May 21, 2020
You cannot have an opponent if you keep saying yes. From "War of the Foxes", which was my favorite. What is war about? Why are people angry? Why must the fox chase the bunnies?
I liked the language in "Lovesong of the Square Root of Negative One". invisible, knot, velocity, vector, elastic, yardstick, equal sign, superimpose, relative, magnetized, polestar.
I think all of these poems have great sounds within them. Single sentence ideas with a ring. But my mind kept seeing Geoffrey Rush from the movie "Shine" where he is stringing words together fast and coherent to his mind, but too rambling to follow the story. Even as I re-read each one a second time immediately, a slower pace did not yield more of an answer.
The collection is very consistent. I found it best to read at a very strong pace on my first reading of the poem. There is something I liked about the words at this speed. These poems might perform well in a spoken environment.
It is interesting that other reviewers also kept hoping for the readability from his prior collection: "Crush". But this collection is from a different branch on the poetry tree.
I liked the language in "Lovesong of the Square Root of Negative One". invisible, knot, velocity, vector, elastic, yardstick, equal sign, superimpose, relative, magnetized, polestar.
I think all of these poems have great sounds within them. Single sentence ideas with a ring. But my mind kept seeing Geoffrey Rush from the movie "Shine" where he is stringing words together fast and coherent to his mind, but too rambling to follow the story. Even as I re-read each one a second time immediately, a slower pace did not yield more of an answer.
The collection is very consistent. I found it best to read at a very strong pace on my first reading of the poem. There is something I liked about the words at this speed. These poems might perform well in a spoken environment.
It is interesting that other reviewers also kept hoping for the readability from his prior collection: "Crush". But this collection is from a different branch on the poetry tree.
May 9, 2016
While this isn't Crush (and it is unfair to even try and compare them), this still a swoon worthy collection of poems. There are feelings that Siken knows how to put on words that are mind-blowing. Have you ever felt like your heart is thundering in your ribcage while you read something?
Well, that's how reading Siken always feels like.
Well, that's how reading Siken always feels like.
February 6, 2022
4/5
Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.
I liked War of the Foxes a little less than I liked Crush, but it was still a solid poetry book. This one I think has less to do with love and more with art and nature and stuff like that, but I could really be completely wrong with that statement. I just think the first few poems were very abstract to me and I really didn’t have a clue as to what some of them meant. Again, probably on me.
She existed enough to be painted. She could have been an idea, but that’s another kind of existing.
The whole common theme of painting came up a lot and that was very interesting to me, but I just didn’t connect with that many poems, the only one I really liked was ‘The Language of the Birds.’ But I do think Richard Silken is talented and this was a short and interesting read. Maybe I’ll come back to it again some day with more insight into what he’s saying.
History is painted by the winners. Keep your paints wet. Trust me, I have things to say.
Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.
I liked War of the Foxes a little less than I liked Crush, but it was still a solid poetry book. This one I think has less to do with love and more with art and nature and stuff like that, but I could really be completely wrong with that statement. I just think the first few poems were very abstract to me and I really didn’t have a clue as to what some of them meant. Again, probably on me.
She existed enough to be painted. She could have been an idea, but that’s another kind of existing.
The whole common theme of painting came up a lot and that was very interesting to me, but I just didn’t connect with that many poems, the only one I really liked was ‘The Language of the Birds.’ But I do think Richard Silken is talented and this was a short and interesting read. Maybe I’ll come back to it again some day with more insight into what he’s saying.
History is painted by the winners. Keep your paints wet. Trust me, I have things to say.
May 9, 2015
Just fucking brilliant. Every single line, every single page. Siken surpasses Crush by a milestone. Crush was a lot about loss, love, death, and heartbreak. In War of The Foxes, Siken goes beyond those major themes in life to talk about the matter/meaning of existence itself through the metaphors of landscapes, birds, and paint. He made me feel things that I can't explain. I threw this book down multiple times while reading. I cried somewhere in the middle and my heart screamed for purpose.
December 22, 2022
richard siken makes me want (need, almost) to read poetry out loud, because only experiencing it through reading doesn’t feel like enough. thought, words, voice, sound, thought again. i loved everything about this, no more, no less.
April 4, 2023
destroy me with your words poem daddy
April 28, 2022
i hope it's love. i'm trying really hard to make it love.
April 19, 2024
I love Richard Siken
May 19, 2022
i'm going to put part of my favorite poem from the collection here, but this book is worth reading in its entirety for sure. (or at least check out glue in full, as well as still life with skulls and bacon, three proofs, and self-portrait against red wallpaper.)
glue
i stepped out so things could progress without me.
the knot of the self: take it out. the knot of the self:
what is the rope? the ability to nullify the self
in favor of the landscape, or a lover, or a bowl of fruit.
what happens when i no longer want to meet you?
something interesting. a legitimate answer, but
it leaves a hole. nothing lasts forever: we know this.
looking changes the looker: we know this. it's easier
to talk about one thing at a time: i know, i know.
mortal love? sure. lovers abandoned and desperate?
sure. longing and suffering? of course, of course.
you want it to mean something. sad pinks cakes.
five strange blue things. you want to have it glued
together. the days were short and the halls were long.
something like that. crawled up the pleat of my coat:
a shadow did. shut the basement door: a ghost did.
it accumulates. grounding the abstract offers several
pleasures: certainly. grabbing the throat of it: that's
what we always do. you can disconnect it or you can
try to glue it all together. he could glue it all together.
i could. who's speaking anyway? not really a problem,
says the moon. since y'all look the same from up here.
glue
i stepped out so things could progress without me.
the knot of the self: take it out. the knot of the self:
what is the rope? the ability to nullify the self
in favor of the landscape, or a lover, or a bowl of fruit.
what happens when i no longer want to meet you?
something interesting. a legitimate answer, but
it leaves a hole. nothing lasts forever: we know this.
looking changes the looker: we know this. it's easier
to talk about one thing at a time: i know, i know.
mortal love? sure. lovers abandoned and desperate?
sure. longing and suffering? of course, of course.
you want it to mean something. sad pinks cakes.
five strange blue things. you want to have it glued
together. the days were short and the halls were long.
something like that. crawled up the pleat of my coat:
a shadow did. shut the basement door: a ghost did.
it accumulates. grounding the abstract offers several
pleasures: certainly. grabbing the throat of it: that's
what we always do. you can disconnect it or you can
try to glue it all together. he could glue it all together.
i could. who's speaking anyway? not really a problem,
says the moon. since y'all look the same from up here.
October 20, 2015
'War of the Foxes' hasn't left me me as heartbroken as 'Crush' did but it still made quiet an impression. I think the poems in this one are more thought-out but at the same time more wild, almost violent. I'm sure I'll read this collection many times in the near future and then I'll be able to talk about my favourites. For now, I cannot stop thinking about 'Detail of the Woods' and 'Self-portrait Against Red Wallpaper'. I'm glad we got new material from Siken. He paints with his words like no one else.
May 11, 2015
This was... disappointing. It was completely boring- all about math and painting. I'm sure it was metaphors and I'm just too whatever to understand it, but Siken's Crush made me feel like someone was stepping on my chest! War of the Foxes made me feel nothing. Not a thing. It was 47 pages of boring that I made myself read.
December 19, 2021
how dare richard siken make me feel things again?
favorite poems: the way the light reflects, landscape with fruit rot and milipede, birds hover the trampled field, still life with skulls and bacon, war of the foxes, four proofs, lovesong of the square root of negative one, dots everywhere, the museum, detail of the woods, glue, turpentine, the worm king's lullaby, the painting that includes all painting
favorite poems: the way the light reflects, landscape with fruit rot and milipede, birds hover the trampled field, still life with skulls and bacon, war of the foxes, four proofs, lovesong of the square root of negative one, dots everywhere, the museum, detail of the woods, glue, turpentine, the worm king's lullaby, the painting that includes all painting
June 30, 2020
loved it. self-portrait against red wallpaper particularly was a terrible call out from mister richard siken and i'm gonna have to read that twice or ten times
April 22, 2017
Honestly a disappointing follow up to the gut-shot emotionalism that made “Crush” so important to me. Although there were some great lines, there was not a single poem that blew me away. Please excuse me while I go reread “Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out” to remind myself of what Siken is really capable of…
April 26, 2023
Absolutely adore it when a poetry collection has recurring characters, symbols, and metaphors that add up to an abstract narrative. Cannot get enough of that. Even better when that narrative is about the creative process and the (ir)relevance of art and literature.
April 29, 2015
My interview with Siken about this book is here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/artic...
November 20, 2020
A lot of metaphoric stuff about painting that didn't really resonate as much as it might have.
March 5, 2023
Richard Siken you will ALWAYS be famous
May 14, 2023
singura carte de poezii la care am plâns că am terminat-o. nu cred că o să-mi revin vreodată după cartea asta.
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