Richard Siken can add yet another trophy to his mantelpiece. It was announced last week that his book Crush, winner of the 2004 Yale Younger Poets prize and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry, has been included among the Spring 2006 Book Sense Picks Poetry Top Ten, based on the nominations of independent booksellers nationwide.

“‘Crush’ is a study of passion, and its effect is a seizure,” says a recent review of the book. “[T]he reading experience is all assault: love, desire, loss, the body, death and the incessant self. Nothing tames the fury of running to and from this story.”

Read two poems (in pdf format) from the book.