I Do Know Some Things

I Do Know Some Things is Richard Siken's third poetry collection, following Crush and War of the Foxes. It moves through the broken landmarks of family trauma: a mother abandons her son, and a husband chooses death over his wife. As the poems dig into these losses, the poet's own history comes into view, including the death of a boyfriend and a stroke that was carelessly misdiagnosed as a panic attack. Much of the book is about a body forgetting itself, with a mind that would not work and a leg that would not move. Meditations on language run through the poems. Nouns will not connect, so Siken has to speak around a meaning, and he sometimes says "black tree" when he means night. He asks what a body can and cannot relearn. The collection is made up of 77 prose poems. Siken is meticulous and fearless in exploring the stories that build a self, and the book follows a process of transformation in which the reader learns to shoulder the dark and to find beauty in a field swept clean of habit.