Evolution
By Eileen Myles
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
The first all-new collection of poems from Eileen Myles since 2011’s Snowflake/different streets, Evolution follows the author’s critically acclaimed Afterglow (a dog memoir), as well as a volume of selected poems, I Must Be Living Twice. In these new poems, we find the eminent, exuberant writer at the forefront of American literature, upending genre in a new vernacular that radiates insight, purpose, and risk while channeling of Quakers, Fresca, and cell phones.
This long-awaited new collection “lopes forward in the strutting style of the witnessing and sincere, but gorgeously nonaustere, poet in New York…The gift of Evolution is its bold depiction of the textually-rendered ‘I’-Eileen” (Kenyon Review).
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
Eileen Myles
Eileen Myles (they/them, b. 1949) is a poet, novelist, and art journalist whose practice of vernacular first-person writing has made them one of the most recognized writers of their generation. Pathetic Literature, which they edited, came out in fall 2022. a “Working Life,” their newest collection of poems, is out now. They live in New York and Marfa, TX.
Read more from Eileen Myles
Chelsea Girls: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5a "Working Life" Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Inferno: A Poet's Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Afterglow: (a dog memoir) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pathetic Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInferno: A Poet's Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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Reviews for Evolution
8 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Evolution by Eileen Myles 2018 Grove Press 5 / 5I am absolutely blown away by this collection of poems, essays and speeches. Poems about belonging, desire, self-consciousness, politics, The Shakers (I´ve been fascinated by the shakers for years, read all i can find) and the process of being human-capable and culpable-how we evolve as individuals.Myles is absorbing and expressive and one of the best gay poets I´ve read. I find her fascinating with an intelligence and depth that is honest and refreshing to read.I highly recommend this book by one of New Yorkś most essential writers.p. 7-8:¨....Anyone here could probably tell me how many countries have legally elected socialist presidents, and moderate presidents and communist presidents and much revered and inspiring presidents and our government in response utterly disregarding their electoral process funded a right-wing autocrat, a human-rights violator who would make a deal. I don´t know if we are the most corrupt nation on earth. Does it need to start there? It´s just that having taken the land from one people and then dragged another people from their continent to work on it for free and then deciding that you want California and Texas and Montana and Idaho and New Mexico and Arizona so you take that from another people I mean when I think that Los Angeles was a Mexican City in 1848. We just thought we would take it. And our soldiers went into veracruz raping people. Just cause they could. And now were going to build a wall......¨Essential.
Book preview
Evolution - Eileen Myles
Also by Eileen Myles
Afterglow (a dog memoir)
I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems 1975–2014
Snowflake / different streets
Inferno (a poet’s novel)
The Importance of Being Iceland / travel essays in art
Sorry, Tree
Tow (with drawings by artist Larry R. Collins)
Skies
on my way
Cool for You
School of Fish
Maxfield Parrish / early & new poems
The New Fuck You / adventures in lesbian reading (with Liz Kotz)
Chelsea Girls
Not Me
1969
Bread and Water
Sappho’s Boat
A Fresh Young Voice from the Plains
Polar Ode (with Anne Waldman)
The Irony of the Leash
evolution
eileen myles
Copyright © 2018 by Eileen Myles
Cover photograph © courtesy of the author
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or permissions@groveatlantic.com.
Text Design by Norman E. Tuttle of Alpha Design & Composition
This book is set in 12 pt. Bembo by Alpha Design & Composition of Pittsfield, NH
First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: September 2018
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-8021-2850-8
eISBN 978-0-8021-4636-6
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication data is available for this title.
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
groveatlantic.com
18 19 20 21 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
for Adam Fitzgerald
contents
Cover
Also by Eileen Myles
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
[I am Ann Lee …]
Evolution
Noggin
Harp
Car Notebook
Wet Paris
Walter Myles
Each Day I Get Up
We Are Stardust
G’s Body
BP
The City
15 minutes
our happiness
A Gift for You
The Baby
St. Joseph Father of Whales
Dream
Dream 2
for you
After the Season
Sept 18
Washington
To My Flowers
El Diablito
Angel
Sharing Fall
Paradise
Notell
beautiful cows
The City of New York
Paint Me a Penis
Large Large White Flowers
Dissolution
August 23
Photograph of everything
Sylvia
Acceptance Speech
Western Poem
The Earth
Jiggly
May 8
Epic for You
May 26
You
You
Circus
So
Today
Memorial Day
Today Egyptian
After Thought
Lark
A
Aloha
Television
Failed Appointment
Notebook, 1981
Kitchen/Holidays
In the Picture
End War
My Poems
While You Live Here
Poem at Dusk
Dear Adam
A Little Bit
The West
The Vow
creep
Transmission
A hundred per cent
Sweet heart
Acknowledgments
Back Cover
I am Ann Lee. I thought that would be a good place to start. I am Eileen Myles. I am 67 years old. My mother died on April 3rd. She was 96. I have not had sex since January. I am writing to you from Cape Cod. It was a horrible week. It was kind of a stray week. I really wanted to be home in New York and I had just gotten back from three weeks in Palestine, Ukraine and Russia. I resisted the impulse to say the Ukraine.
Is that its name. I just wanted to be home after that. I had planned to be in Provincetown in August but there was this available week in June. I thought that’d be nice. Yeah but won’t you be tired. You know that thing where you know something but you speed up over that voice convincing yourself that the logical thing is true. I came up here with a friend and we did a little work together and next morning she got on one of those tiny planes. We thought this is such a Sagittarian trip that she would drive up to the Cape with me & my dog to do a little work and leave the next morning in order to hear a band named red ants spelled red aunts that she really loves and they were after all really great. I began my week of relaxing and working and being in my home state. I began to miss my mom. Around weather. Because it was horrible this week. It like rained all day long and all night long. I didn’t have to go to the beach but you know it was cold too and I was staying in an unheated shack in a part of Provincetown called Tasha Hill which is very rustic which means wet wood and hobbit houses and goats and horses and roaming dogs and chipmunks but like really chilly and the internet wasn’t working and the gas wasn’t on and using the space heater I blew a fuse. It’s a circuit corrected Thomas who I rented the place from. Who cares, it blew, it blew. It rained and rained and I wanted to call my mother in her nursing home in Greenfield and say what do you think of this weather. And she would say it stinks. But I can’t. That’s exactly the way I miss my mother. A deepening of the abyss with a hoot. I miss that. I mean there were many nice moments including one last night when it was already nice again and I was stepping over a wall onto the wooden ladder onto the beach and I thought I’m like Tennessee Williams. I’m like an old queer in the