The third poem I want to look at is A Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out by Richard Siken. The poem was publish in Siken’s debut novel Crush which won the Yale Younger Poets Prize, it was described by a competition judge Louise Gluck as being “about panic.” There is no tragic back story for these poems Siken remains an illusive writer believing “The work should work, or not work, without me. I’m the writer, not the story.” One of the main themes in this poem is religious imagery. Even in the title Siken uses the word “Litany” which means “a form of prayer consisting of a series of invocations, each followed by an unvarying response” this echoes the structure of the poem where he is talking to someone, this is later addressed in …show more content…
I think that this is not strictly true as the poem clearly shows there is another person involved and the context within the overall original text suggests that he is defiantly writing about a relationship with another person. However a identity crisis over his queerness could be seen as a factor in this. For example we see him talking about how he “ruined everything by saying it out loud.” which could suggest they are somehow keeping there relationship a secret or that he outed his partner which could cause there relationship to breakdown. Later in the poem it says “You said I could have anything I wanted, but I // just couldn’t say it out loud.” Which not only repeats the wording from before, linking the lines in the readers head, but also shows how the narrator was too scared to admit to himself what he truly wanted which allowed it to slip through his fingers. This would explain the heightened emotions of this scene where he is “crying” and the other man is “smiling and crying in a way that made [him] even more hysterical” this is a good interpretation as it explains the heightened emotions of the scene that are all happening underneath the