Richard Siken

Best-selling poet and painter Richard Siken uses strong, bold strokes to reveal a world abstract, concrete, and exquisitely complex.

War of the Foxes

from “portrait of fryderyk in shifting light”

sage lynn

How much can you change / and get away with it, before you turn into someone / else, before it’s some kind of murder?

Some people paint / with whiskey and call it social drinking. Some people / paint drunk and put dots of color everywhere. / In the morning the dots make them happy. I am / putting dots of color everywhere and you are sleeping. / Something has happened in the paint tonight and / it is worth keeping. It’s nothing like I thought it / would be and closer to what I meant. None of it is / real, darling. I say it to you. Maybe we will wake up / singing. Maybe we will wake up to the silence / of shoes at the foot of the bed not going anywhere.

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?

The wrong things have been wired together. Things that shouldn’t touch. The sooner you embrace it, the sooner it will leave you. / These damages are connected.

The world doesn’t know what to do with my love. Because it isn’t used to being loved. 

We smuggled ourselves into ourselves. Haunted by each other’s knowledge. To hide somewhere is not surrender, it is trickery. / I try to guess your trajectory and end up telling my own story.

Everyone needs a place. It shouldn’t be inside of someone else. / Your body told me in a dream it’s never been afraid of anything.

I’ll live alone or in between. This is the testimony of the deer: solitude, the long corridors, love from a distance.

I put my sadness in a box. The box went soft and wet and weak at the bottom. I called it Thursday. Today is Sunday.

Hook and bait, polestar and checkmate, I am your arrival, there is no refusal, we are here, you see, together, we are already here.

Was I discovered or invented? / Measure yourself against the truth and not the other way around. / Perfect and completely dead.

If you don’t believe in God, then who are you talking to?

And everyone secretly wants to collaborate with the enemy, to construct a truer version of the self. How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it’s some kind of murder?

You cannot get in the way of anyone’s path to God. You can, but it does no good. Every spy knows this. Some say God is where we put our sorrow. God says, 

Which one of you fuckers can get to me first?

People like to think war means something.

Let’s admit, without apology, what we do to each other. / We know who our enemies are. / 

I like dead things, they cannot hurt me. / My body is a graveyard, you’re welcome. 

You will die in your sleep and leave everything unfinished. / I had obligations: hope, but hope negates the experience. / I owe myself nothing. / All these things and what to do with them. / We carve up the world all the time.

A man had two birds in his head. / and the birds would sing all day never stopping. / 

Something’s not right about what I’m doing but I’m still doing it—living in the worst parts, ruining myself. / The enormity of my desire disgusts me.

The mind fights the body and the body fights the land. It wants our bodies, the landscape 

, and everyone runs the risk of being swallowed up. / We do not walk through a passive landscape. The paint dries eventually. The bodies decompose eventually.

Why take more than we need? Because we can. / You’d break your heart to make it bigger, so why not crack your skull when the mind swells. / 

The paint doesn’t move the way the light reflects, so what’s there to be faithful to? / There is no light in the paint, so how can you argue with them?

"His territory is [where] passion and eloquence collide and fuse.'—The New York Times "Richard Siken writes about love, desire, violence, and eroticism with a cinematic brilliance and urgency."—Huffington Post Richard Siken's debut, Crush, won the Yale Younger Poets' Prize, sold over 20,000 copies, and earned him a devoted fan-base. In this much-anticipated second book, Richard Siken seeks definite answers to indefinite questions: what it means to be called to make—whether it is a self, love, war, or art—and what it means to answer that call. In poems equal parts contradiction and clarity, logic and dream, Siken tells the modern world an unforgettable fable about itself. The Museum Two lovers went to the museum and wandered the rooms. He saw a painting and stood in front of it for too long. It was a few minutes before she realized he had gotten stuck. He was stuck looking at a painting. She stood next to him, looking at his face and then the face in the painting. What do you see? she asked. I don't know, he said. He didn't know. She was disappointed, then bored. He was looking at a face and she was looking at her watch. This is where everything changed . . . Richard Siken is a poet, painter, and filmmaker. His first book, Crush, won the Yale Younger Poets' prize. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

kemi

The hand is a voice that can sing what the voice will not, and the hand wants to do something useful. 

Sometimes, at night, in bed, before I fall asleep, I think about a poem I might write, someday, about my heart

Blackbird, he says. So be it, indexed and normative, but it isn't a bird, it's a man in a bird suit, blue shoulders instead of feathers, because he isn't looking at a bird, real bird, as he paints, he is looking at his heart, which is impossible.

Unless his heart is a metaphor for his heart, as everything is a metaphor for itself, so that looking at the paint is like looking at a bird that isn't there, with a song in its throat that you don't want to hear but you paint anyway.

overall i liked the collection but towards the end it started to lose me

em 摇摇

clau☁️

i had high expectations for this book and i’m sad to say it didn’t meet them. i have to say this might be a me problem. i liked all the poems, i just didn’t deeply connect with any of them. a few quotes were very meaningful and there was a poem that stood out for me, but that wasn’t enough to make me love the entire book.
i do want to read crush because a lot of people seem to like it better and think the poems are more emotional and raw (which is what i was looking for and if i’m completely honest i bought this one instead because i loved the cover).
i think the author’s writing is completely beautiful and i do want to give him a second chance!

made me internally screaming because i didn’t knew richard siken known me so well. 

self-portrait against red wallpaper and glue made me internally screaming because i didn’t knew richard siken known me so well. 

Maria

“I wanted to explain
myself to myself in an understandable way. I gave
shape to my fears and made excuses. I varied my
velocities, watched myselves sleep. Something’s not
right about what I’m doing but I’m still doing it—
living in the worst parts, ruining myself. My inner life
is a sheet of black glass. If I fell through the floor
I would keep falling. The enormity of my desire
disgusts me.”

𓆨

"𝑰 𝒑𝒖𝒕 𝒎𝒚 𝒔𝒂𝒅𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒂 𝒃𝒐𝒙. 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒐𝒙 𝒘𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒔𝒐𝒇𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒘𝒆𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒘𝒆𝒂𝒌 𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒐𝒕𝒕𝒐𝒎."
"𝑰 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒓𝒐𝒂𝒅 𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌, 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒆𝒆 𝒊𝒇 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈. 𝑨𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒂 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒆, 𝑰 𝒘𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌 𝒊𝒏𝒔𝒊𝒅𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒑𝒑𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒐𝒙."

Kendall McClain

luca

"How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it's some kind of murder?"

charisa

I feel like this might be a 5. I need to think about it some more. I really liked some of these and didn’t understand others bc poetry is hard!!!! But Self-Portrait Against Red Wallpaper read like a gut punch LOL 

Also, loved this:

“Paint ghosts over everything, the sadness
of everything. We made ourselves cold. We made ourselves
snow. We smuggled ourselves into ourselves. Haunted by
each other’s knowledge. To hide somewhere is not surrender, it is trickery. All day the snow falls down, all night the snow.
I try to guess your trajectory and end up telling my own story.
We left footprints in the slush of ourselves, getting out of there.”

‘war of the foxes’ is the first work i’ve read by siken, and it sure as hell didn’t disappoint ! so many one liners, so many different themes, such engaging poems ... i have a habit of annotating my books and enjoyed myself quite a lot with this one. if i had to be picky, my only complaint about this book would be that the author is kind of repetitive with his "images" (if that makes any sense) and it can get boring sometimes because yeah, we get it, you paint. seriously, i promise you we get it. can we talk about something else now ? but that’s a minor concern really, it doesn’t take anything away from his artistry. also i understand it’s important to choose a motif and stick to it and he did that perfectly. all in all, i think this is pretty incredible. i know i’m going to think about some of these poems for a very long time.

brianna

4.5

i'd love to never have to look at this again actually

the thoughtful, analytical voice in this book is different to 

, more polished maybe, but just as impressive; at certain points i had to pause to put my hand on my heart and squeal a bit over how good the poems were. 

 is literally the peak of all literature ever guys

the thoughtful, analytical voice in this book is different to crush, more polished maybe, but just as impressive; at certain points i had to pause to put my hand on my heart and squeal a bit over how good the poems were. the worm king's lullaby is literally the peak of all literature ever guys

Bridget Smith

this was good because its siken, but reading it just made me want to read crush again. there are some beautiful concepts, but it lacked the passion and ferocity of his first collection. that was probably intentional, but i couldn’t help but feel like something was missing! that being said this is still a stunning work + reflection on creation and self.

my favorite line was “sometimes, at night, in bed before i fall asleep, i think about a poem i might write, someday, about my heart, says the heart.” like!!!!!!

“What is alive and what isn’t and what should we do about it? Theories: about the nature of the thing. And of the soul. Because people die. The fear: that nothing survives. The greater fear: that something does.”

Eliza Gonzalez

if you have one apples and i take away one apples you have, zero apples and a sadness

here's another problem: if i have one war of the foxes and you take away all the magic of crush, i have zero interest and a sadness.

i wanted to love this book so much. when crush came out, i was obsessed with it, and i knew then that siken would be my favorite contemporary poet. if i had gotten my hands on war of the foxes first, i wouldn't have even bothered reading crush. these almost seem as if written by two different people. there is definitely (obviously) siken in this book, but gone are the poems that made me feel things and situations i could relate to, or at least empathize with. if you're really unto winding, vividly worded poetry about painting, you'll probably like this, but i could not maintain my interest at all and i'm not ashamed to admit i just didn't get a lot of the poems.

still crossing my fingers to love whatever book he comes out with next.

Aleena Korell

Full disclosure: I'm not a huge poetry fan. Richard Siken's Crush was the first book of poetry I've loved enough to read all the way through. Siken's follow-up to Crush with War of the Foxes is very different-- which is fair enough. No one wants to or should be put in a box to replicate what they've done before.
But equally as fairly enough, it doesn't resonate with me in the same way. The tone is entirely different, quieter and more subdued. It feels to me like one long poem split into chapters and sections rather than a collection of poems, and that seems intentional with lines and themes threading through the entire book. That theme and those threads just didn't seem to capture me in the same way-- I'm sure there are plenty of others who will love it.
My favorite two poems were the titular War of the Foxes, and The Museum-- incidentally the two that seemed to stick out most from the main tone and theme with word choice and subject. 
At any rate, I'll always read Siken. Hopefully we get more from him someday.

Nadia

I enjoyed this a lot more than I enjoyed Crush tbh.

I found the imagery in this to be a lot lighter, which I liked. I liked all the images of nature and of painting, and found that these even softened the ones of war. This book didn't have the same feeling of obsession, it felt a lot quieter?

I enjoyed most of the poems at the beginning a lot more, I felt I did not like the ones nearer the end so much, although in most of them there were lines I really liked anyway. I will come back and reread this one again soon I think!

zilver 

3.5-4

the top two reviews of this book i think put a lot of my thoughts into words already so thank you for that, reviewers.

war of the foxes is definitely less quotable and less personal than crush. i think that’s the main reason for taking away some stars, that the thing that drew me (and, i think, many others) to crush is how personal and raw it was, how it touched me to my core with its beauty and its pain. war of the foxes is more distant and i missed the closeness i remembered from crush. but i think it’d do me good to reread this book in a little while, so i can see it as its separate entity, which is what it deserves. i have to remind myself that there were over 10 years between the publishing of crush and the publishing of war of the foxes - richard siken has clearly grown and developed himself and his poetry and his scope. 

favourites: landscape with a blur of conquerors; birds hover the trampled field; landscape with several small fires; war of the foxes; ghost, zero, suitcase, and the moon, lovesong of the square root of negative one, self-portrait against red wallpaper

War of the Foxes

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