I Do Know Some Things

Richard Siken turns toward the rawest parts of life: the wounds of childhood, the ache of loss, and the fragile work of rebuilding after a stroke. With stark honesty and stripped-down form, he writes without disguise or distance, meeting pain head-on in language as precise and unflinching as a target’s center.

Each of the seventy-seven prose poems feels like a small, closed room—intimate, unsettling, and alive with truth. In reclaiming his voice and body, Siken invites readers into a difficult, courageous intimacy, one that exposes what it means to survive, remember, and keep writing in a world that does not always feel safe.