

We were assigned to read “Little Beast,” the third poem in the book, and, with an intensity more heightened than with any poetry I’d ever read before, I felt so completely consumed by the poem’s world that I almost believed I had been in, and destroyed by, love. I had first read the Yale Series of Younger Poets’ winning collection at a writing program when I was 14. In my last poetry class, we closed out the quarter by reading “Crush” by Richard Siken.
