Photographer Unknown, I Am the Wind
“I am the wind and the wind is invisible, all the leaves tremble but I am invisible, blackbird over the dark field but I am invisible, what fills the balloon and what it moves through, knot without rope, bloom without flower, galloping without the horse, the spirit of the thing without the thing, location without dimension, without a within, song without throat, word without ink, wingless flight, dark boat in the dark night, shine without light, pure velocity, as the hammer is a hammer when it hits the nail and the nail is a nail when it meets the wood and the invisible table begins to appear out of mind, pure mind, out of nothing, pure thinking, hand of the mind, hand of the emperor, arm of the empire, void and vessel, sheath and shear, and wider, and deeper, more vast, more sure, through silence, through darkness, a vector, a violence, and even farther, and even worse, between, before, behind, and under, and even stronger, and even further, beyond form, beyond number, I labor, I lumber, I fumble forward through the valley as winter, as water, a shift in the river, I mist and frost, flexible and elastic to the task, a fountain of gravity, space curves around me, I thirst, I hunger, I spark, I burn, force and field, force and counterforce, agent and agency, push to your pull, parabola of will, massless mass and formless form, dreamless dream and nameless name, intent and rapturous, rare and inevitable, I am the thing that is hurtling towards you…”
—Richard Siken, Lovesong of the Square Root of Negative One, War of the Foxes
Born in New York City in February of 1967, Richard Siken is an American painter, poet, and filmmaker. He studied at the University of Arizona, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and later a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry.
Richard Siken is one of the co-founders and editors of Spork Press, established in 2001. Besides publishing its “Spork” 
literary magazine, the press produces novels and chapbooks, some of which were released in serial form. Siken received a Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment of the Arts and two Arizona Commission on the Arts grants.
Influenced by the 1991 death of his boyfriend, Richard Siken wrote his collection of poems “Crush” which was published by Yale University Press.. A powerful literary work that is confessional, gay, and infused with eroticism, “Crush” won the 2004 Yale Younger Poets Competition, and received the Lambda Literary Award for “Gay Men’s Poetry” in 2005, and the Thom Gunn Award from Publishing Triangle in 2006. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Siken’s most recent work, his second book of poems, “War of the Foxes”, was released from Copper Canyon Press in 2015. With interwoven lyrics, fables, portraits and landscapes, Siken confronts the ways in which we look to art for meaning and purpose. The poems in “The War of the foxes” show the fallacies inherent in a search for truth, both in the world outside and within the self.
Richard Siken currently lives and works in Tucson, Arizona.