‘cause I couldn’t make you love me and I’m tired of pulling your teeth.

I’ll be your slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue and final resting, walking around with this. Published that year as part of the Yale Series of Younger Poets. because I’m hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own. It’s always encouraging to see poets of Sikens’ stature taking up videopoetry, especially when the results are this ambitious. In 2005, I happened upon a copy of Richard Sikens Crush while browsing at Saint Marks. It is a prose poem, consisting of 24 numbered segments (one can call them stanzas, even though they lack formal metrical structure), which are loosely connected by a few fragmented narrative lines and numerous reiterated images, phrases, and feelings. I am beyond grateful to Richard for that rare poetic gift. Richard Siken’s poem You Are Jeff was published in his first poetry collection, Crush (2005). As a lyricist, to no other writer than Richard would I trust my work to take a back seat but in doing so, I get gently but confidently pointed to its essence.

This is his first film and, as a filmmaker myself, I am awed not only by this short work’s striking imagery but also by its rare ability to get to the essence of these three songs. Richard is by far my favorite American poet. I am deeply honored that Richard would use my music to accompany his stunning poem “Why”. It’s the first poem in Crush, a collection that won the prestigious 2004 Yale Younger Poets prize at the recommendation of poet laureate Louise Glück. Richard Siken ’s first book, Crush, published in 2005, was a rarity among poetry collections it garnered both critical and popular acclaim, winning the 2004 Yale Younger Poets Prize and selling more than 20,000 copies. The description on Vimeo quotes her reaction: Richard Siken’s poem Scheherazade is one of my favorites, and one of only a few I have memorized. Long poems don’t always translate well into the film medium, but American poet Richard Siken seems to have hit upon a winning formula in his very first go at filmmaking, collaborating with the French-born singer Marianne Dissard, three of whose songs are heard in succession while the text of the poem appears on the screen.

Richard siken crush poem