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Staff Pick

I Do Know Some Things

by Richard Siken

*2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Finalist*

I Do Know Some Things is a brave book, both in content and method.

It is brave to write about childhood scars and the heartbreak the dead leave behind. It is brave to reconfigure one's life in the aftermath of a stroke. Richard Siken presents these subjects directly, without ornament, and with nothing to hide behind, confronting the fact that he can no longer manipulate the constructions of form, or speak lies that tell the truth. In spite of these limitations, Siken chooses to write these poems and release them into a dangerous world. Each image, each sentence, is as direct as the American artist Jasper Johns's shooting targets. Each poem is like a small room in a house, a room where you will be punched in the throat. As he claws himself back into a self, into a body, Siken has written a book that is unsettling and autobiographical by necessity, and its seventy-seven prose poems invite the reader to risk a difficult intimacy in search of yet deeper truths.

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Pages:

128

Published:

5 Sept 2025

Format

Hardback

Publisher

Copper Canyon Press

ISBN:

9781556596247

*2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Finalist*

I Do Know Some Things is a brave book, both in content and method.

It is brave to write about childhood scars and the heartbreak the dead leave behind. It is brave to reconfigure one's life in the aftermath of a stroke. Richard Siken presents these subjects directly, without ornament, and with nothing to hide behind, confronting the fact that he can no longer manipulate the constructions of form, or speak lies that tell the truth. In spite of these limitations, Siken chooses to write these poems and release them into a dangerous world. Each image, each sentence, is as direct as the American artist Jasper Johns's shooting targets. Each poem is like a small room in a house, a room where you will be punched in the throat. As he claws himself back into a self, into a body, Siken has written a book that is unsettling and autobiographical by necessity, and its seventy-seven prose poems invite the reader to risk a difficult intimacy in search of yet deeper truths.

$55.00

77 autobiographical prose poems that broke my heart into a million squillion little pieces. Siken chronicles family trauma, the loss of his boyfriend in the early 90's and the experience of and recovery from a misdiagnosed stroke. Necessary; crushingly beautiful.

Eden's avatarEden, Unity Books wellington