Eileen Myles

Available once again for a new generation of readers, the groundbreaking and candid coming-of-age novel in-real-time from one of America's most celebrated poets that is considered a cult classic. In this breathtakingly inventive autobiographical novel, Eileen Myles transforms their life into a work of art. Told in an audacious voice, made vivid and immediate in lyrical language, Chelsea Girls cobbles together memories of Myles' 1960s Catholic upbringing with an alcoholic father, their volatile adolescence, their unabashed "lesbianity," and their riotous pursuit of survival as a poet in 1970s New York. Suffused with alcohol, drugs, and sex; evocative in its depictions of the hardscrabble realities of a young artist's life; and poignant with stories of love, humor, and discovery, Chelsea Girls is a funny, cool, and intimate account of a writer's education, and a modern chronicle of how a young writer shrugged off the chains of a rigid cultural identity meant to define them.

In this breathtakingly inventive autobiographical novel, Eileen Myles transforms their life into a work of art. Suffused with alcohol, drugs, and sex; evocative in its depictions of the hardscrabble realities of a young queer artist's life; with raw, flickering stories of awkward love, laughter, and discovery, Chelsea Girls is a funny, cool, and intimate account of how one young writer managed to shrug off the imposition of a rigid cultural identity. Told in Myles's audacious and singular voice made vivid and immediate by their lyrical language, Chelsea Girls weaves together memories of Myles's 1960s Catholic upbringing with an alcoholic father, their volatile adolescence, their unabashed "lesbianity," and their riotous pursuit of survival as a poet in 1970s and 80s New York.

'Ruthlessly unguarded, surgically self-parodic and infinitely funny ... An indispensable book about friendship and intimacy; I alternately laughed and shivered as I turned the pages' GuardianFrom the prolific poet, activist and writer Eileen Myles, a "Working Life" unerringly captures the measure of life. Exploring permanence and mortality, danger and safety, fear and wonder, these poems arise in the close quarters of air travel, the flashing of a landscape through a train window, in a truck tooling around town, or on foot with a dog during the pandemic lockdowns. Their 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 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 Myles working at a thrilling new pitch of their poetic and philosophical powers.

Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019 The most ambitious work of fiction by one of the world’s greatest writers “In this dreamlike novel . . . amid increasingly bizarre scenarios, appearances give way to hidden, otherworldly layers.”—New Yorker In this darkly comic novel, a group of women inhabits a world of constant surveillance, where informants lurk in the flower beds and conspiracies abound. Some try to flee—whether to a mysterious gambling bordello, underground ancestral homes, or Nest County, where traditional medicines can reshape or psychologically transport the self. Can Xue’s mesmerizing storytelling traces love’s many guises—satirical, tragic, transient, lasting, nebulous, and fulfilling—against a kaleidoscopic backdrop of commerce and industry, fraud and exploitation, and sex and romance drawn from the East and the West.

From "one of the essential voices in American poetry" (New York Times) comes a rich new collection of expansive, light-footed, and cheerfully foreboding poems oddly in tune with our strange and evolving presentThe 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.a "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.

An utterly unique collection composed by the award-winning poet and 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 pathos and feeling, giving a well-timed rehab to the word "pathetic" "Literature is pathetic." So claims Eileen Myles in their provocative and robust introduction to Pathetic Literature, a breathtaking mishmash of pieces ranging from poems to theater scripts to prose to anything in between, all exploring the so-called "pathetic" or awkwardly-felt moments and revelations around which lives are both built and undone. Myles first reclaimed the word for a seminar they taught at the University of California San Diego in the early 2000s, 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 identification of "pathetic" as ripe for reinvention forms the need for this anthology, which includes a hearty 106 contributors, encompassing canonical global stars like Robert Walser, Jorge Luis Borges, Rumi, and Gwendolyn Brooks, literary libertines like Dodie Bellamy, Samuel R. Delany, and Bob Flanagan, as well as extraordinary writers on the rise, including Nicole Wallace, Precious Okoyomon, and Will Farris. Wrenching and discomfiting prose by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Jack Halberstam, and Porochista Khakpour rubs shoulders with poems by Natalie Diaz, Victoria Chang, Lucille Clifton, and Ariana Reines, and butts up against fiction from Chester Himes, Djuna Barnes, Chris Kraus, and Qiu Miaojin, among so many others, including Myles's own opening salvo of their 1992 presidential campaign. The result is a completely anomalous and uplifting anthology that encourages a fresh political discourse on literature, as well as supplying an essential compendium of pained, awkward, queer, trans, gleeful, and ever-jarring ways to think differently and live pathetically on a polarized and fearful planet.

From "one of the essential voices in American poetry" (New York Times) comes a rich new collection of expansive, light-footed, and cheerfully foreboding poems oddly in tune with our strange and evolving presentThe 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.a "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.

An utterly unique collection composed by the award-winning poet and 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 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 106 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.

In this third Why I Write volume, Eileen Myles addresses the social, political, and aesthetic conditions that shape their work “A sharply etched, unvarnished self-portrait.”—Kirkus Reviews “[Myles] has a good time journeying through Hell, and like a hip Virgil, . . . is happy to show us the way.”—National Public Radio "This is signature Myles: the unconventional syntax, the jazzy rhythms, the total commitment to writing in the heat of the moment, not edited or modulated by concessions to linear rationality."—Phil Gambone, Gay & Lesbian Review In this raucous meditation, Eileen Myles offers an intimate glimpse into creativity’s immediacy. With erudition and wit, Myles recounts their early years as an awakening writer; existential struggles with landlords; storied moments with neighbors, friends, and lovers; and the textures and identities of cities and the country that reveal the nature of writing as presence in time. For Myles, time’s “optic quality” is what enables writing in the first place—as attention, as devotion, as excess. It is this chronologized vision that enables the writer to love the world as it presently is, lending love a linguistic permanence amid social and political systems that threaten to eradicate it. Irreverent, generous, and always insightful, For Now is a candid record of the creative process from one of our most beloved artists.

»En av USA:s stora författare.« Chris Kraus »Dikterna rör sig obehindrat och på något sätt självklart mellan det personliga och offentliga, mellan fantasi och verklighet. En sällsam upplevelse.« Epiloger »Jag kan beundra hennes hängivenhet, hennes kontinuitet, hennes outtröttliga vitalitet, som får dikterna att vibrera av liv.« BernurEileen Myles poesi rör sig på ett självklart sätt mellan det personliga och det politiska, fantasi och verklighet - det är pang på, ruffigt, queer, humoristiskt, vackert och romantiskt. I ständig rörelse och med överraskande vändningar knixar, kränger, flödar dikterna fram, en tyglad kaskad som inbegriper allt detta som är vårt liv - dess sorglighet och skönhet. Hen tar oss med ut i sin stad, längs dess våta gator och tunnelbanor. En ung poet står i regnet och röker på en färja klockan fem på morgonen. En kvinna kör genom öknen, på väg vart och från vad? Vardagen är full av små mirakel för den som kan uppfatta dem och ingenting är för trivialt för att skrivas om. »En flicka i en roddbåt, full av hål. Hon såg ord komma upp ur dem.« Ingen omskrivning är ett urval ur samlingsvolymen I Must Be Living Twice från 2015. Boken spänner över fyra decennier, 1975-2014, och inbegriper dikter ur elva böcker, från debutsamlingen The Irony of the Leash och framåt. Urval och svensk översättning av Helena Eriksson. EILEEN MYLES , född i Cambridge, Massachusetts 1949 och bosatt i New York sedan 1970-talet, hör till vår samtids mest hyllade amerikanska poeter. Av de många litterära priser hen tilldelats kan nämnas Shelley-priset från Poetry Society of America och Lambda Book Award. 2019 kom romanen Chelsea Girls ut i svensk översättning på Modernista.

»Oerhört gripande med sitt nakna porträtt av poetens ego, sårbart men hungrigt.« | Interview »Med Chelsea Girls etablerar sig Eileen Myles som en av USA:s stora författare.« | Chris Kraus »En rolig, sinnlig och suggestiv skildring som luktar och smakar av det queera och vildsinta New York på 1980-talet.« | Jenny Aschenbrenner, Svenska Dagbladet »Eileen Myles skriver tidlöst och oförfalskat.« | Gordana Spasic, GPMed Chelsea Girls [1994] förnyade Eileen Myles den självbiografiska romanen som genre, och gjorde stor konst av sitt liv. En oförställd, opolerad, ömsint och inte minst sinnrikt komponerad text genom vilken författaren filtrerar sina livsminnen: Uppväxtens katolska uppfostran, livet med en alkoholiserad far. Den labila ungdomstiden. En tumultartad kamp för överlevnad som poet och som öppet lesbisk i sjuttio- och åttiotalets New York. Myles blixtbelyser den unga kämpande konstnärens liv - alkoholen, drogerna och sexet - och formulerar samtidigt en berättelse om den utforskande kärleken och flykten från de rigida kulturidentiternas fängelse. Chelsea Girls är en rapport från en författares läroår, lika aktuell nu som när den först publicerades. I svensk översättning av poeten Helena Eriksson. EILEEN MYLES , född i Cambridge, Massachusetts 1949, är en amerikansk författare. Myles hör till samtidens mest hyllade amerikanska poeter. Av litterära priser och stipendier hen tilldelats kan nämnas Shelley-priset från Poetry Society of America, Lambda Book Award, stipendierna Guggenheim Fellowship samt Warhol Foundation / Creative Capital.» Omskakande läsning, med så mycket droger och sprit att jag nästan är redo för avgiftning efter att ha läst klart.« | Pekka Heino, GQ»Eileen Myles verk har alltid varit kompromisslöst direkta, en framåtvänd presentation av sig själv, på samma gång sårbar som granskande.« | The New York Review of Books

The first all-new collection of poems since 2011's Snowflake/different streets--and following the critically acclaimed Afterglow (a dog memoir), as well as the volume of selected poems, I Must Be Living Twice--here, in Evolution, we find the eminent, exuberant writer at the forefront of American literature, upending genre in a new vernacular that enacts--like nobody else--the way we speak (inside and out) today. Evolution, with its channeling of Quakers, Fresca, and cell phones, radiates vital insight, purpose, and risk, like in these opening lines of the title poem: Something unearthly about today so I buy a Diet Coke & a newspaper a version of "me" something about me on the earth & its sneakers& feeling like the earth's furniture but that can't be true or like the coke & the Times it's true for a little while.

En av USA:s mest hyllade samtida författare äntligen på svenskaMed Chelsea Girls [1994] förnyade Eileen Myles den självbiografiska romanen som genre, och gjorde stor konst av sitt liv. En oförställd, opolerad, ömsint och inte minst sinnrikt komponerad text genom vilken författaren filtrerar sina livsminnen: Uppväxtens katolska uppfostran, livet med en alkoholiserad far. Den labila ungdomstiden. En tumultartad kamp för överlevnad som poet och som öppet lesbisk i sjuttio- och åttiotalets New York. Myles blixtbelyser den unga kämpande konstnärens liv - alkoholen, drogerna och sexet - och formulerar samtidigt en berättelse om den utforskande kärleken och flykten från de rigida kulturidentiternas fängelse. Chelsea Girls är en rapport från en författares läroår, lika aktuell nu som när den först publicerades. I svensk översättning av poeten Helena Eriksson. EILEEN MYLES [1949], född i Cambridge, Massachusetts, är en amerikansk författare. Myles hör till samtidens mest hyllade amerikanska poeter. »Omskakande läsning, med så mycket droger och sprit att jag nästan är redo för avgiftning efter att ha läst klart.« | Pekka Heino, GQ»Eileen Myles verk har alltid varit kompromisslöst direkta, en framåtvänd presentation av sig själv, på samma gång sårbar som granskande.« | The New York Review of Books »Oerhört gripande med sitt nakna porträtt av poetens ego, sårbart men hungrigt.«| Interview »Med Chelsea Girls etablerar sig Eileen Myles som en av USA:s stora författare.« | CHRIS KRAUS

Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019 The most ambitious work of fiction by one of the world’s greatest writers “In this dreamlike novel . . . amid increasingly bizarre scenarios, appearances give way to hidden, otherworldly layers.”—New Yorker In this darkly comic novel, a group of women inhabits a world of constant surveillance, where informants lurk in the flower beds and conspiracies abound. Some try to flee—whether to a mysterious gambling bordello, underground ancestral homes, or Nest County, where traditional medicines can reshape or psychologically transport the self. Can Xue’s mesmerizing storytelling traces love’s many guises—satirical, tragic, transient, lasting, nebulous, and fulfilling—against a kaleidoscopic backdrop of commerce and industry, fraud and exploitation, and sex and romance drawn from the East and the West.

Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, 2019New Statesman's best books of the year, 2018This new book of poems and essays by Eileen Myles finds our game-changing writer keying lines in the euphoric style that the New York Times has called 'one of the essential voices in American poetry.'Following the critically claimed Afterglow (a dog memoir) and I Must Be Living Twice, their career-spanning selected poems, Evolution is Myles' first all-new poetry collection since 2011's Snowflake/different streets. These new poems upend genre in a vernacular that enacts, like nothing else, the way we speak (inside and out today). From walking around Marfa and New York City with an orange pit bull to Eileen's transcendent acceptance speech as President, Evolution lifts a can of Diet Coke as an End-of-the-World toast to embodiment, irreverence and risk.