Distinct among the poetry collections I have thus read. I do fear the description given in 'The Worm King's Lullaby' may be accurate: "esoteric and unfollowable, written with perfect penmanship and a total disregard for any reader."

The writing style I can best describe as follows: acutely cryptic and abstract in regards to meaning, incredibly matter-of-fact in regards to sentence structure. Prose style and occasionally justified text fit snugly. Invariable usage of the present tense adds a lively dimension to an otherwise quiet collection. The painting theme works well when it is utilized, but it peters out for the most part toward the back half of the book, as does the appeal of the poetry. I also have never seen a competent writer utilize repetition to this extent. ( )

Siken's second poetry collection, War of the Foxes, is a much subdued, much quiet collection. Where Crush is mostly rough, obsessed, and eager to encapsulate the lover with its ravaging arms, War of the Foxes drinks up the lover through glances and stares from afar frequently with a brush and canvas at hand; the encapsulation happens every time, every chance art inspires and devastates. Often portrays the painter and their subject in myriad of spaces and touches, entwining bodies and bodies separated, each poem in this collection observes and loves. The palette is an iridescence of homosexual devotion, affection, and frustration. It tries to recognise its own self in the act of loving, even in the mere thought of a particular someone, and its unusual personification of birds as if to free itself through its flight as desire weighs it down in its mental battlefield. This yearns at a distance, that in itself is a kind of warfare. The result then is abstract ("What does this love amount to?", Siken asks), we are all unrecognisable in the state of loving and unloving; painting is a collaboration between the painter and their subject.

When we paint a beloved, see the beloved, do we genuinely capture who they are or are our biases create and smudge them with our own perception? Do we love an ideal and an idol? When do we love what's real and what's really there?

Siken absolutely resonates with the utmost struggle of immortalising the beloved through art but as is with Crush, somehow it can be stifling. A pleonasm of afflicting emotions and contradicting utterances coat some of the poems. Where there should be moments to breathe, take a break, put the brush down and return to the canvas much later on, this instead laboriously refines and alters the portraits again and again to its own dissatisfaction. Its want of perfection dangerous. Nonetheless I was very much moved by a lot of poems here compared to Crush, three of them even tugged a tear down my eyes and another two which I can't forget: Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light, Landscape with Black Coats in Snow, Self-Portrait Against Red Wallpaper, Three Proofs, and Dots Everywhere.

Some excerpts I loved:
"Color bleeds, so make it work for you.
Gravity pulls, so make it work for you. Rubbing

your feet at night or clutching your stomach in the
morning. It was illegible—no single line of sight,
too many angles of approach, smoke in the distance.
It made no sense. When you have nothing to say,
set something on fire. A blurry landscape is useless."
— from Landscape with Fruit Rot and Millipede

"I would like to say something
about grace and the brown corduroy thrift store coat
I bought for eight-fifty when you told me my
paintings were empty. Never finish a war without
starting another. I've seen your true face: the back
of your head. If you were walking away, keep walking."
— from Birds Hover the Trampled Field

"I put my sadness in a box. The box went soft and wet and weak at the bottom. I
called it Thursday. Today is Sunday. The town is empty."
— from The Field of Rooms and Halls

"Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else."
— from Detail of the Woods

"What’s the difference between me and the world?
Compartmentalization. The world doesn’t know
what to do with my love. Because it isn’t used to
being loved. It’s a framework problem. Disheartening?
Obviously. I hope it’s love. I’m trying really hard
to make it love. I said no more severity. I said it severely
and slept through all my appointments. I clawed
my way into the light but the light is just as scary.
I’d rather quit. I’d rather be sad. It’s too much work.
Admirable? Not really. I hate my friends. And when
I hate my friends I’ve failed myself, failed to share
my compassion."
— from Self-Portrait Against Red Wallpaper ( )

Siken's second collection is a departure from his first, Crush, which left a mark. War of the Foxes is a controlled meditation on representations and his use of the act and artifacts of painting is an excellent means to wrestle with this dilemma. I was left with many images, birds captured in flight over a field and soldiers gathering their weapons. There is so much life in the poems that could easily turn too cerebral.

Unlike everyone else (lol) this was my first Siken book. I've read a few of his earlier poems ("You Are Jeff" for example) and I enjoyed them immensely; I just happened to come across this book before "Crush" so I suppose my review is from a fairly different perspective.

I enjoyed this very much. I loved the structure of this book, the way the poems built off one another, circled and edged around an idea, struggled with questions that echoed back in other poems. I loved the repetitive images of birds, painting, spies, the moon. I loved mostly how Siken plays with representation, how he links hunger, desire, memory, and blood with all that we want to portray, to believe, to understand. I liked the simplicity of the poems, the bare-bones words Siken uses. It felt appropriate to grapple with representation in pared-down vocabulary, trying to find the heart of it and never quite succeeding.

I guess if I'd read "Crush" first perhaps I'd have expected something different. But "War of the Foxes" has certainly made me want to read more Siken so I'd count that as a success! ( )

Fairly disappointing. After reading [b:Crush|96259|Crush|Richard Siken|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1422764050s/96259.jpg|92779] I was expecting another total gut-punch, but War of the Foxes just felt a lot more detached, and a lot less raw and emotional. There were some nice lines in it but I probably won't pick it up again. ( )