"I never realized how outside I was until I realized they wouldn't let me in. They didn't want me. I didn't know. I just thought I was weird."

I love that the cover photograph looks like a depiction of a nest and a grave at once. But it would be a grave with a window view. A high level grave with a window view. And metal steps you can use to leave should the emergency of not being dead suddenly occur. I suppose it also looks like the womb and many of these poems go in and out of feelings and thoughts around the death of a mother. So there's that additional desire to wrap oneself up in one's past. But then it feels too warm. Get these

To say something is easy reading implies that it's fluffy, shallow, perhaps purely entertainment like a harlequin romance. Eileen Myles is not easy reading but she's easy to read and we are all the better for it. Working in a determinedly vertical manner, Myles narrates her life stories with interjections on love, sex, her philosophy of how the world works and what she's fighting for. Often tagged as an LGBGT, which she is, Myles deserves and to some extent gets the larger audience her poetry de...

“my mouth is / red for every / child who / has starved / eating / the corpse / of their / father / or / mother. My corpse / is spaghetti / sharing birthdays / w a famous / clown / a famous / blind man / & a famous / actor. This cool / makes me / want to / divulge / go on exposing / my hunger / which is / the only / story I / know."This book was a lot, in many ways, and I had to get used to that, but I liked it (a lot, I think??).

I find it difficult to read these poems. Myles makes up her own rules, whether she writes prose or poetry. Sometimes she runs words without a "road map" (no punctuation, capitalization), or in her poems splits up a word (the beginning ends one line, the end begins the following line), and it's difficult for me to find coherence. But this, I suppose, is labeled "poetic license." (I'm ok with her splitting words up, as some poets do that.) I would like to hear her read her work, as I've heard she'...

I often felt at a loss with this collection. Short lines, and sentences often fragmented and lightly punctuated, the poet wandering from one thought/structure to another in the middle so that they don’t make “sense.” Slowly, though, themes and patterns emerged, even though I was still often at a loss. Loss, for one: of the poet’s mother; of youth; of a less safe and conventional New York. But the persistence of desire, of curiosity, of life. A person still evolving. There are references to compu...

2.5 stars

This is my first Myles book and it's very different from a lot of poetry that I've been reading. It read as very casual and stream-of-conscience in a way that I have an intuitive resistance to, but the sort of peripatetic quality of the poems is I think in fact very intentional and quite effective for a good chunk of the book. I wish there had been a little more variance in form (a lot of very short lines, enjambment as nearly the only syntax) but that's a personal quibble and not a flaw with th...

Eileen Myles writes stripped down and truncated lines here, while reminiscent of Robert Creeley in form, Myles is far more interested in the world of people. Politics, conceptions of self, elections, the history of Shakers, and elegy all weave these fragmentary, unpunctuated, and seemingly unadorned verse. Myles also has a gift for ambivalent or ambiguous lines that complicate the emotional resonance of the poems. My only complaint is that brevity and fragment are so consistent that one often lo...

I feel sort of bad for giving this not any higher than one single star. However, I am a big poetry fan so I have read all sorts of poetry styles about different subjects. I have noticed throughout the years (this makes me sound like an old woman) that even though I may not always like the writing style at first, that I still find a way to connect with the author after reading a few poems. This was however not the case with this book. I did not like the style at all. This may come across as quite...

Spotted this book in the window of the University of Chicago Seminary Coop Bookstore, and thought, now there's a fun souvenir of Chicago to take home with me! I ended getting more than this one book, but if I'd only gotten this one, it would still have been a reason to be glad we visited the campus on our way home to Ohio (we decided to fly from SFO to Chicago, and drive the rest of the way). The book opens with the text of a talk she gave that was co-sponsored by a Shaker Museum that begins "I

It’s a personal taste thing—I like Myles best when she’s in narrative or semi-narrative mode, while many of the poems in this volume lean towards impressionistic collections of overheard conversation, or inside jokes, or images too far away from me as a reader to access. Still, a lot of this is great and very engaging, but I wish there was more room for me as a reader in it, as someone who can participate by understanding rather than being stuck to glory mostly in the sound of the language as th...

Sauntering about internal and urban landscapes, past and present, Eileen Myles comments upon politics, pop culture, desire, selfhood, and more in the poems of their latest collection, Evolution. Scattered throughout the 176-page collection are a few rambling prose poems that speed through subjects such as Trump's election, the Shakers' history, the loss of the poet's mother, Comey's public persona, and women's ambition. They rank amongst the most memorable parts of Evolution. Far more common, if...

“Will I al-ways confusea moment in my lifefor the rest of my life”

Truly the New York poet of our time, Myles' latest work is incomparably their best yet. A political commentary, a confession, a dedication to the ass (as we've seen before with Myles), Evolution is a collection on intimacy and how to deal with yourself throughout the Trump era.

yes, i did

beautiful! I picked this book up almost by accident and now I will be going back and reading all of Myles' work

Evolution 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 refr...

Five stars for the introduction, the acceptance speech, and “Sweet Heart” alone.

This review first appeared on the blog Ally's Appraisals: https://wp.me/p37L0Q-X5. My Thoughts: In Evolution we see a lot of the poet, Eileen Myles, in her work. I really enjoyed everything Evolution had to offer, the poetry is both emotional and refreshing - Myles shows us all that poetry can be.Poetry makes us feel, and in Evolution we are offered a range of emotions: love, loss, desire, regret, and at times loneliness. Throughout the book we are given an insight into the woman herself - we le...