You Are Jeff

Richard Siken’s poem “You Are Jeff” was published in his first poetry collection, Crush (2005). It is a prose poem, consisting of 24 numbered segments (one can call them stanzas, even though they lack formal metrical structure), which are loosely connected by a few fragmented narrative lines and numerous reiterated images, phrases, and feelings. Like the whole collection, the poem is about gay male desire, hope, and heartbreak. It resists clear-cut messages and builds an overall sense of its meaning through suggestion, implication, evocation, and a gradual deepening and amplification of its emotional register.

Poet Biography

Richard Siken was born in New York City in 1967 and lives in Tucson, Arizona. He holds a B.A. in psychology and Master of Fine Arts from the University of Arizona. In addition to being an accomplished poet, Siken is a painter, filmmaker, and a co-founding editor at Spork Press. He has also worked as a social worker (though Siken refutes this). Crush, Siken’s first book of poetry, won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize and was published by Yale University Press in 2005. It also won the Lambda Literary Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.