Readers either relish Eileen Myles's outrage and outrageously out-there writing or think the poet is a bit of a kook. Their inventive work and over-the-top persona don't allow for much in-between. A 1992 write-in candidate for U.S. president on an "openly female" platform, Myles makes no effort to mask the political in their two dozen works of poetry, fiction, essays and drama. Feminism, pacifism, anti-colonialism and other
isms find a courageous advocate in Myles.
Rich in vernacular and innovative line breaks, these poems ask to be read out loud--like these lines from "St. Joseph Father of Whales" in Evolution: "I heard your/ Joseph Josephy/ songs in the whales/ last night/ giant round giggly organs/ tickling and mooing/ and diving calves, you're/ the oldest & the silliest/ Joe--need to keep/ you on my/ side."
Although Myles grew up in Cambridge, Mass., Catholic schools and graduated from UMass Boston, they are a product of New York City through and through. A downtown denizen and self-described dyke, Myles is an alternative Patti Smith--complete with a 1980 Mapplethorpe photograph. As they describe in "Dear Adam": "Out of a/ conservative/ diaspora came I mongrel poet from Massachusetts/ to make my mark." And quite a mark it is. Afterglow, the experimental "dog memoir" about the street litter pit bull Rosie, led to a Guggenheim Fellowship to add to four Lambda Awards and a Clark Prize. After 20 books from small presses, however, Myles takes to this newfound celebrity with caution.
Despite the public acclaim, Myles crafts poems of personal nature in Evolution. In very short lines, they are also reflective, contemporary, political, erotic and even aphoristic. "Each Day I Get Up," for example, starts with a bang: "I think I'm kind of Morrissey/ don't you/ though his sweatshirt/ wouldn't be so/ cheap/ though he'd/ probably wish/ that it/ was." The short poem "Today" is a kind of graffiti fortune cookie: "I would love to love someone/ forever & f**k them till they/ died." Here in full is "creep," the collection's most directly political poem:
"ugly nightmare
eating too much
dunking your head in water
over and over
again. Feel bad
for your kid
all of them
but most of all us
bad nights
when I was young
and drinking pred
atory men
with swollen
heads would
buy me drinks
and want to f**k
me again &
again because
I was nothing
to them and he is
our president
now."
Evolution is a triumphant collection that manifests these words from Myles's prose poem "Notebook, 1981": "I called it poetry, but it was flesh and time and bread and friends frightened and free enough to want to have another day that way." --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.
Shelf Talker: In a bold collection of poems, Eileen Myles reinforces their justifiable fame as the unabashed voice of what's left of New York's downtown edginess.
