Little Beast

Richard Siken’s “Little Beast” is part of his award-winning debut collection Crush (2005). Like many of the poems in Crush, “Little Beast” touches on themes of destruction, identity, trauma, death, and sex. The lyric poem is an unconventional love poem. Siken’s ex-boyfriend influenced many of the poems in Crush, although Siken doesn’t explain the ex-boyfriend’s influence in detail and believes poems should stand on their own without biographical or other background information. The poem is a part of a canon of gay male poetry that pairs desire and violence to further explore personhood, history, and the complexities of love.

Poet Biography

Richard Siken’s biographical particulars are elusive and difficult to verify. He apparently grew up in Tucson, Arizona. His mom was a therapist, and his dad was a lawyer. (Before Siken’s dad died, Siken’s dad admitted that he killed his first wife.) At the University of Arizona, Siken earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and an MFA in poetry. In a 2006 profile for the Poetry Foundation, Siken was described as a social worker. In a 2018 interview with the poetry podcast "Commonplace," Siken said he wasn’t a social worker, but he did work at a group home for adults with a dual diagnosis.