People like to say Eileen Myles is a “post-punk poet." I’m not sure what that means.
I ask her over coffee the other day; she isn’t sure either.
“An in-between artist,” she offers. "Something that changes shapes.”
What’s special about Myles is how authentic she remains while always evolving. An easy example is her presence on both Twitter and Instagram. “I can write progressive poems through the day,” she says of Twitter. As for Instagram, the caption may prove the most interesting part. “It’s like the way you end a poem—the way you cinch it—thats’s so fun and accessible to thousands of people. It’s like winking at somebody.”
I ask her if I can post a picture of the tiny, navy blue notebook she’s shown me, which is now sitting on the table next to our coffees. We’re in a cafe in the East Village, Myles' neighborhood since she came to New York in 1971.
“Yes.” I take the photo. I’m embarrassed.
I show her a tiny book of my own. It is from my collection of Hanuman Books, the series of avant-garde works printed in India by Raymond Foye and Francesco Clemente in the '80s. The one I present to Myles features a picture of her on its red cover and gold letters spelling “Bread and Water.” It’s an edition of a short story that will appear in the writer's 1994 collection, Chelsea Girls, to be rereleased this September.
She tells me about a time she went to dinner with the Hanuman crew, including the Indian publisher who had carried a shipment over in his luggage, which was cheaper than shipping from Madras. This was at an Indian joint that was not far from where we are, somewhere around 2nd Avenue and 5th Street. The East Village has, of course, changed since then.
We talk about how all of sudden in the '80s, when MTV was born, neighborhood fashion became global. “Never again could you trust someone by their style,” Myles says. And it’s true. Now, with social media, we can steal references and imitate others, which isn’t necessarily bad, merely unreliable.
I ask her about her thoughts on this weird public world we both play in. I’m thinking of a few lines from Inferno:
We’re hunched and weaving over the keys of our green our grey or pink blue manual typewriter maybe a darker stone cold thoritative selectric with its organismic expectant hum and us popping pills and laughing over what you or I just wrote, wondering if that line means insult or sex. Or both. Usually both.
She says social media didn’t make human interaction complicated. “It was always complicated.”
I ask her about a PS1 MoMA talk which she was was part of last November, entitled "
I ask her over coffee the other day; she isn’t sure either.
“An in-between artist,” she offers. "Something that changes shapes.”
What’s special about Myles is how authentic she remains while always evolving. An easy example is her presence on both Twitter and Instagram. “I can write progressive poems through the day,” she says of Twitter. As for Instagram, the caption may prove the most interesting part. “It’s like the way you end a poem—the way you cinch it—thats’s so fun and accessible to thousands of people. It’s like winking at somebody.”
I ask her if I can post a picture of the tiny, navy blue notebook she’s shown me, which is now sitting on the table next to our coffees. We’re in a cafe in the East Village, Myles' neighborhood since she came to New York in 1971.
“Yes.” I take the photo. I’m embarrassed.
I show her a tiny book of my own. It is from my collection of Hanuman Books, the series of avant-garde works printed in India by Raymond Foye and Francesco Clemente in the '80s. The one I present to Myles features a picture of her on its red cover and gold letters spelling “Bread and Water.” It’s an edition of a short story that will appear in the writer's 1994 collection, Chelsea Girls, to be rereleased this September.
She tells me about a time she went to dinner with the Hanuman crew, including the Indian publisher who had carried a shipment over in his luggage, which was cheaper than shipping from Madras. This was at an Indian joint that was not far from where we are, somewhere around 2nd Avenue and 5th Street. The East Village has, of course, changed since then.
We talk about how all of sudden in the '80s, when MTV was born, neighborhood fashion became global. “Never again could you trust someone by their style,” Myles says. And it’s true. Now, with social media, we can steal references and imitate others, which isn’t necessarily bad, merely unreliable.
I ask her about her thoughts on this weird public world we both play in. I’m thinking of a few lines from Inferno:
We’re hunched and weaving over the keys of our green our grey or pink blue manual typewriter maybe a darker stone cold thoritative selectric with its organismic expectant hum and us popping pills and laughing over what you or I just wrote, wondering if that line means insult or sex. Or both. Usually both.
She says social media didn’t make human interaction complicated. “It was always complicated.”
I ask her about a PS1 MoMA talk which she was was part of last November, entitled "