I Do Know Some Things

The long-anticipated third collection from the revered Richard Siken delivers his most personal and introspective collection yet.

Richard Siken’s long-anticipated third collection, I Do Know Some Things, navigates the ruptured landmarks of family trauma: a mother abandons her son, a husband chooses death over his wife. While excavating these losses, personal history unfolds. We witness Siken experience the death of a boyfriend and a stroke that is neglectfully misdiagnosed as a panic attack. Here, we grapple with a body forgetting itself--＂the mind that / didn’t work, the leg that wouldn’t move...＂. Meditations on language are woven throughout the collection. Nouns won’t connect and Siken must speak around a meaning: ＂dark-struck, slumber-felt, sleep-clogged.＂ To say ＂black tree＂ when one means ＂night.＂Siken asks us to consider what a body can and cannot relearn. ＂Part insight, part anecdote,＂ he is meticulous and fearless in his explorations of the stories that build a self. Told in 77 prose poems, I Do Know Some Things teaches us about transformation. We learn to shoulder the dark, to find beauty in ＂The field [that] had been swept clean of habit.＂

Richard Siken is a poet, painter, filmmaker, and co-founder of Spork Press. His book Crush won the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, selected by Louise Glück, 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 (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) and I Do Know Some Things (Copper Canyon Press, 2024). Siken is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, two Lannan Fellowships, two Arizona Commission on the Arts grants, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.