One of those books that I highlight until the pages become watercolor paintings. A dreamy winding account of the author's young adulthood with vivid flashes of lucid existential clarity. Lulled me into amused complacent spectatorship only to knock me off my feet into a chasm of truth again and again.

I picked up this book because it's about lesbians and poetry. Both of which I like a lot. On this it did not disappoint.The story itself is very messy--good and bad. At first I was into it (how could I not be, when it begins by describing her English professor's ass); each section kind of creating it's own little world. Myles paints a good picture of mid 70s-90s New York City, and of the struggling poet trying to find a way to express herself. But in the middle section, which is framed as a gran...

The subtitle "A Poet's Novel" makes me wonder what makes it different from say, "a novelist's novel" or "an artist's novel." Is it the gonzo approach to grammar, flow, story, and dialogue? Hmmm. Maybe that's it. Myles plays/writes using her own rules. If I were her editor I think my head would explode (after about 20 pages, I probably would realize: Oh, this is art. This is uneditable. This is freaking Eileen Myles!).I like how this is essentially a memoir with the N-word ("novel") attached to i...

was thinking this was a 3/5 all the way til the last section where it wrapped up so beautifully and everything fell into place

I had to read this for class, and of all the assigned novels it was the one I most expected to like. But it's the one I like the least.It's not fiction, for starters, and that bugs me in a class for writing fiction. The author is a poet and it's the story of her poetic life. I am not that literary a writer. I am not overly-enamored of literary events. Just the same way I suppose I prefer musicals to straight plays; I am easily bored. This book has a very long chapter detailing readings the autho...

I quite liked this amorphic, slippery little book. Although it wobbled about with it's free-form structure lack-of-structure; it managed to never collapse under itself. It was like an engorged clit. Or a jellyfish on steroids. Slippery; because there's a good five to ten pages towards the end that are saturated with pussy; clits and labia, you'll know it when you hit it, hold on tight. There was one spectacular line elsewhere, "(...) and his pretty little asshole was like a bud when Rene found h...

I reviewed this book for the Poetry Foundation and right now I have to stop fucking around with Goodreads and answer the factchecker's questions about my review. Anyway, spoiler I give it five stars. Eileen Myles is the god of you.

"Everything was pathetic and it wouldn't stop. I'm a mess. And I could show how that looked. I resigned myself to continuous movement. Like I'm drawing. Like if there is "a form" it exists independent of me, or else I'm complicit in it. I'm wandering in it. Underlining. Changing horses all the time. And each decision left a mark. And I lay there in the hot New York night writing my poem to Alice, to Susie, to everyone I knew--about being--not in literature, not in relation to some historical for...

eileen is a rascal

"I borrowed her and she borrowed me from our lives." thanks for letting me borrow ur life for a bit too...everyone should borrow eileen's life / inferno just saying...

i remember reading some kim gordon interview where she said rock and roll was paying to watch someone else be free. poetry is the same thing but no one pays and it's more personal and pure because, frankly, no one gives a fuck.except. except.this messy, score-settling, no-longer-pure-but-still pure memoir has some heft to it. both the heft of trying for decades worth of personal history and also like it was meant to be done right. unrushed. yet it also has myles' great openness, as if it really

I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. The meandering narrative made it hard for me to put it down, but not necessarily in a good way. More of a this is making me anxious and I don't know where it's going so I can't stop kind of a way. Glad I read it though. Plus the last page really spoke to me. I have a hard time leaving parties too. Eileen Myles thinks a poem is like a party. I think a lot of things are like a party.

I don't want to say too much because I want you to read it. I will say it Has a Part at the End. When I was done reading the Part I closed the book and hit it five times against the wall. It damn near killed me. You will see. RIP Lola 1986-2010 "Myles, Eileen. Inferno: A Poet's Novel. (2010) pp228-236"

I read this because I heard it had a lot of sex in it, and due to some kind of error the publisher sent it to me for free. Other times I tried to read Eileen Myles I couldn't get past the feeling that she was full of it in the bad way, but in this book she seemed more sympathetic because there are parts about being young and not knowing a lot, and there is that great line about being an old crappy dyke with half a brain leaking a book. There wasn't as much sex as I was hoping but still some pret...

this is such a good read for a time in my life where I am trying to figure out how to be a poet. here are some quotations I like from it about poetry so I can save them and also return this to the library because it's due tomorrow:p. 52: "Poetry readings were like early teevee in that everyone had their own little show. Though teevee got more sophisticated (worse) poetry never did. It remains stupid, run by fools. It's the only way to hold it open."p. 108: "I mean and I would definitely say poet...

One reaches for some version of the hackneyed phrase: so perfect in its imperfection. My astonishment, for myself anyway, feels new: I can't remember the last time I loved a work of literature that's so MESSY. I think the 3 parts stand better on their own than together, but Myles has so much swagger that if she says these are her inferno, puragatorio, and paradiso, I buy it.The great (perhaps healing) joy of Inferno is hearing a woman say EXACTLY the things I have needed to say for as long as I

I loved this book so much I'm not sure I can write an objective review. It was not just a book; for me, it was an experience.Eileen Myles is a poet. She is gay and from a working class family in Boston. (Both of these facts are relevant to her writing, facts that are important to her and both influence and are contained in her poetry). This book is not a simple one to categorize (you can see how many shelves I put it on!). There is a lot of memoir, although she skips around chronologically and m...

poetry helped us grow up, poetry is the world. eileen has such affection for writing, but also knows writing just *is*. "it's boring. it happened to us." and poetry started the american culture wars. and poetry made us realize we're queers. this is a community book of poets hanging out in kitchens, talking. and subsequently, there's a lot of lesbian sex and passionate obsession. also collective memory, misbehaving at readings, and walking towards a volcano late at night, for hours. "a poet is a

I mean, what can I say about this book? I wanted to underline every second paragraph or so. EM combines a natural facility for storytelling, hooky, humorous anecdote, and the intellectual & metaphysical brilliance one would expect from a poet of her stature. But what is especially excellent about this book, the factor that will make it worth returning to, is its risky quality - its refusal to stick to a linear narrative, its depiction of a life lived around corners - the suggestion that this IS

Myles, a likable guide, leads readers on a tour of the NYC's downtown poetry/art scene of the '70s & '80s. Unlike Dante's inferno, Manhattan's inferno is more heavenly than hellish, a place where artists can afford to live and hang out with other artists producing art! Thanks to Myles' wild use of language I often had no idea what she was talking about, but nearly as often she illuminated tiny slivers of reality with both perceptive brilliance and beauty.