You Are Jeff

At one point in the poem, the speaker makes an explicit hermeneutic statement (a statement about interpretation): “This is how you make the meaning, you take two things and try to define the space between them” (Stanza 18). That stanza brings together identity and desire, asking both who “You” wants to be and whom “You” loves: “Jeff or Jeff?” Each Jeff’s identity, however, acquires meaning only in the context of other Jeffs: Jeff may appear aggressive because other Jeffs’ behavior is mild, or someone finds Jeff handsome because he looks like other Jeffs who have been called handsome. This is important to the poet, as he reveals in an interview while discussing his dislike of reducing identity to a name:

Naming restricts. Once restricted, it’s easy to be judged and punished. […] In ‘You Are Jeff,’ everyone in the world—including the speaker and the reader—is named Jeff. With only one identity, each part of the world must now define itself in relation to its other parts, rather than as a stand-alone thing, independent of context (Russell, Legacy. “Fight Club: Richard Siken.” 2011. Bomb Magazine).

Accordingly, the poem refuses to “name” its meaning, to state it explicitly. Instead, it accumulates meaning through a series of evocative phrases and images, strategically juxtaposed and reiterated, like pieces of a puzzle that each reader puts together somewhat differently. Nevertheless, some prevailing themes and emotions are likely to resonate in each reader’s experience.

In the same interview, Siken tells the story of a high school student who was writing a paper on one of his poems and emailed him to ask for significant events in his life that would help her understand his poetry. Siken responded that if she needed that kind of information to make sense of the poem, then “the poem was a failure.” She wrote back complaining that he was rude and that she would get a B on her paper. Siken sums up his view thus: “You get the page. I get the rest.” While it is highly likely that some feelings and actions depicted in Crush originate in the poet’s own experiences, it is unnecessary, even misguided, to assume that knowing more about his life leads to a better understanding of his work. Literary critics have called this the biographical fallacy: the idea that a work of literature directly reflects the author’s experience and should be interpreted in that light. This approach is limiting because it ignores two key facts: firstly, due to the complexity of language, the meaning of a literary work always exceeds the author’s intention, and secondly, each reader brings to the text her own thoughts and emotions, which contribute to the creation of meaning, which happens when the reader actively engages with the words on the page.