Eileen Myles Book order

The first new collection since Evolution from the prolific poet, activist, and writer Eileen Myles, a “Working Life” unerringly captures the measure of life. Whether alone or in relationship, on city sidewalks or in the country, their lyrics always engage with permanence and mortality, danger and safety, fear and wonder. “Working Life” is a book transfixed by the everyday: the “sweet accumulation” of birds outside a window, a cup of coffee and a slice of pizza, a lover's foot on the bed. These poems arise in the close quarters of air travel, the flashing of a landscape through a train window, or simply in a truck tooling around town, or on foot with a dog in all the places that held us during the pandemic lockdowns. Myles's lines unabashedly sing the happy contradictions of love and sex, spill over with warnings about the not-so future world threatened by climate change and capitalism, and also find transcendent wonder in the landscapes and animals around us, and in the solitary and collective act of caring for one another and our world. With intelligence, heart, and singular vision, a “Working Life” shows Eileen Myles working at a thrilling new pitch of their poetic and philosophical powers.

Schreiben, so Eileen Myles, ist eine Art des Kopierens, des Aufzeichnens, des Festhaltens der unnachgiebig voranpreschenden Zeit, deren gnadenloser Strom sich mit Händen nicht greifen lässt – und so hält Myles sie in einem rabiaten Klammergriff des Blicks: schaut zurück auf ein Leben, das sich wild und kompromisslos der Vergängnis hingibt. Doch als eines Tages eine ganze Kiste voller unersetzbarer Aufzeichnungen verschwindet, tost ein Tornado radikaler Überlegungen los, der alles durcheinanderwirbelt, alle vermeintlichen Gewissheiten über das Wesen der Vergangenheit sowie Sinn und Unsinn, ihr nachzustellen, über den Haufen wirft. Und so führt die Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit, die immer neue Exzesse des Hinschauens und Festhaltens hervorbringt, Eileen Myles am Ende zurück zu sich selbst, in die Gegenwart. Die absolute Anwesenheit des Geistes, ob im zähen Kampf gegen den Mietenwahnsinn in New York, bei einem unerwarteten Ankommen in Marfa, Texas, oder während zahlloser Gespräche mit Liebhaber: innen und anderen Wegbegleiter: innen, prägt, wie Zur Zeit eindringlich erfahrbar werden lässt, ein Leben, das vollständig im Schreiben aufgeht – und umgekehrt.

"An utterly unique collection composed by the award-winning writer, a global anthology of pieces from lesser-known classics by luminaries like Franz Kafka, Samuel R. Delany, and Gwendolyn Brooks to up-and-coming writers, that examine the politics of pathos and feeling, giving a well-timed rehab to the word "pathetic". "Literature is pathetic." So claims Eileen Myles in their bold and bracing introduction to Pathetic Literature, an exuberant collection of pieces ranging from poetry to theater to prose to something in between, all of which explore those so-called "pathetic" or sensitive feelings around which lives are built and revolutions are incited. Myles first reclaimed the word for a seminar they taught at the University of California, San Diego, rescuing it from the derision into which it had slipped and restoring its original meaning of inspiring emotion or feeling, from the ancient Greek rhetorical method pathos. Their reinvention of "pathetic" formed the bedrock for this anthology, which includes a breathtaking 105 contributors, encompassing titans of global literature like Robert Walser, Jorge Luis Borges, Rumi, and Gwendolyn Brooks, queer icons and revolutionaries like Dodie Bellamy, Samuel R. Delany, and Bob Flanagan, as well as the invigorating newness and excitement of writers on the rise, including Nicole Wallace, Precious Okoyomon, and Will Farris. Creative nonfiction by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Jack Halberstam, and Porochista Khakpour rubs shoulders with poetry by Natalie Diaz, Victoria Chang, Lucille Clifton, and Ariana Reines, all joined by prose from Chester Himes, Djuna Barnes, Chris Kraus, and Qiu Miaojin, among so many others. The result is a matchless anthology that is as much an ongoing dialogue as an essential compendium of queer, revolutionary, joyful, and always moving literature. From confrontations with suffering, embarrassment, and disquiet, to the comforts and consolations of finding one's familiar double in a poem, Pathetic Literature is a swarming taxonomy of ways to think differently and live pathetically on a polarized and fearful planet"-- Provided by publisher

In this third Why I Write volume, Eileen Myles addresses the social, political, and aesthetic conditions that shape their work

The book offers an innovative and intimate portrayal of life with a pit bull named Rosie, highlighting the unique bond between the author and her dog. Eileen Myles, recognized as a counter-cultural icon, infuses the narrative with personal insights and reflections on companionship, identity, and the nuances of pet ownership. Through this lens, the story explores broader themes of love, loyalty, and the complexities of human-animal relationships.

Eileen Myles - 'a big deal, a rock star' (NPR) - has written this intimate account, both real and conjectured, of living with a pit bull named Rosie: Afterglow is an innovative examination of love and loss from 'a kick-ass counter-cultural icon' (New Yorker)

This new collection of poems by Eileen Myles, Evolution, finds our game-changing writer keying lines in an idiomatic, euphoric style that the New York Times has called "one of the essential voices in American poetry"

Why can't I live right now. Because I am not rich, I am not a saint. But I do know this: not all of us were sent here to work. The first published novel of legendary poet and performer Eileen Myles follows a queer female growing up in working-class Boston, straining against the institutions that hold her: family, Catholic school, jobs at a camp, at a nursing home, at a school for developmentally disabled adult males. Free-ranging and deadpan, tragic and joyful, this is a book about women, gender, class, bodies, escape, and what it means to be "inside."

"Set in the post-martial-law era of 1990s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile depicts the coming-of-age of a group of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan's most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, Qiu Miaojin's cult classic novel is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and countercultural icon. Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman who is alternately hot and cold toward her, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes the devil-may-care, rich-kid-turned-criminal Meng Sheng and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover Chu Kuang, as well as the bored, mischievous overachiever Tun Tun and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend Zhi Rou. Bursting with the optimism of newfound liberation and romantic idealism despite corroding innocence, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant and intimate masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature"--