Abstract

Abstract:

This essay examines the unsettling connection between desire and panic in Richard Siken's poetry collection Crush (2005). Focusing in particular on the representation of gay desire, it explores to what extent the tensions in Siken's poems are informed by heteronormative narratives. The essay identifies the "panic" that Louise Glück pinpoints as the main driving force of this collection as the result of the complex relations between the affective forces that the poems negotiate, relying especially on Sara Ahmed's work on comfort and heteronormativity.

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