Eileen Myles, Inferno: A Poet's Novel (O/R Books, 2010) and Snowflake / different streets (Wave Books, 2012)

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Especiallyif you’re a poet, Eileen Myles’ Inferno:A Poet’s Novel is an addicting read, almost like a drug, or at least it wasfor me.  I kept reading and readingto see whose name would be mentioned next.  Eileen has forged her path and made her own name on the NewYork art scene from the mid-1970s up to the present day, so the roster of peoplewho appear in the pages of this literary tell-all is deep and vast.  At a cursory glance and just forstarters (let’s try this out alphabetically rather than chronologically): John Ashbery, Amiri Baraka, TedBerrigan, Jim Carroll, Gregory Corso, Hart Crane, Tim Dlugos, Allen Ginsberg, June Jordan,Bill Knott, Michael Lally, Joan Larkin, Robert Lowell, Carson McCullers, AliceNotley, Frank O’Hara, Ron Padgett, Marge Piercy, Rene Ricard, Adrienne Rich,Aram Saroyan, James Schuyler, Patti Smith, Anne Waldman.
Backin November of 2001, I invited Eileen to give a talk in conjunction with acourse on queer identity that I teach at Emerson College in Boston.  I recall that she brilliantly describedhow exactly the New York art scene operates:  it's a grid of intersecting friendships that overlays the griddedmap of the city’s intersecting streets and avenues.  The above list of writers whom Myles encountered in her everyday life makes it clear just how precise her metaphor is.  And most of the poets on this list areones whom Eileen met when they were in the early stages of their careers.  As she wisely remarks, “There’s nomystery why poetry is so elaborately practiced by the young.  The material of the poems is energyitself, not even language.  Wordscome later.”
Myles’ Inferno is “a poet’s novel” inseveral senses:  it’s written forpoets, largely about poets, and most importantly, it explores the life andartistic evolution of the author herself, focusing mainly on her developmentas a poet.  It’s Eileen’s infernobecause (in addition to spending some time beside an erupting Hawaiian volcano) she’s our Virgil throughout the book, which is just like Eileen’s generosity — asher readers, we get to be Dante, even though she’s the one who’s writing.  Also just like Eileen:  her poet's autobiography is a long and twistedroad through the descending circles of hell that ends in a subtitled sectioncalled “Heaven.”
Commentingon the narrative mode of the book late in the novel, Myles says, “It’s easy towrite an autobiography if the absence in the story is me.  I remember applying to art school in1967, staying up late, and I saw my reflection in the black glass of thenight.  When a window becomes amirror.  Who do I think I amsitting here now, deeper in that life.” There’s a wonderfully prescient echo of that passage very early in thebook, too, when Eileen remembers her late nights of studying at her desk as astudent at UMass Boston: “Sometimes in utter hopelessness I put my cheek on the table like it wassomeone.  I wanted to wake my brainup and be loved.”

Thefirst section of the novel interweaves several narrative strands:  Eileen’s youth and education in Boston,her early years as a poet after her move to New York, and a more specificstory about a night that she and another woman spent as hired escorts for apair of visiting Italian businessmen. (Just read the book yourself to see how that one turns out.)  The self-consciously postmodern move ofthe book’s second section:  toincorporate the actual manuscript of a grant proposal that will fund thewriting of the novel itself, complete with lots of underlined, presumablytypewritten words instead of italicized ones.  It feels like a smart move, as opposed to feeling like aploy.  After all, Eileen’s Inferno is about how a writer makes herway in the world, and part of that is about money, grant applications beingperhaps the best source of it.
Infact, Eileen’s many commentaries on class and survival provide the book withits most distinctive and valuable insights, highlighting the link betweenstarving artists and their unofficial patrons.  Like few other writers can, Eileen manages to pack an entirelifetime of experience into a single paragraph, along with some really sageadvice:
“Often,the person in the loft and the little apartment or room know each other.  This is the traditional definition ofcool.  Because rich people needpoor friends (but not too poor!) to maintain their connection to the strugglethat spawned them even if they never struggled.  Poor people tend to know what’s going on plus they are oftengood-looking, at least when they are young and even later they are coolinteresting people the rich person once slept with, so the poor person alwaysfeathers the nests of the rich.  Ifsomething bad happens to the poor person, the rich person would help.  Everyone knows that.  An artist’s responsibility for a verylong time is to get collected, socially.”
Forinstance, Myles was fortunate to live for two years, on and off, at thecountry estate of a wealthy New York couple, somewhere way out in the woods ofPennsylvania.  She describes hertime there, and the solitary, dedicated work of writing her poems, as a kind ofspiritual journey, one that liberated her from all of the trappings of societyand its litany of invasive constructs: “I took my shirt off and I simply became no one, no name, no sex, justmoving alive across the land with a dog. Art brought me this.”  She evenbegins to say a quiet little prayer each morning, appropriately, before shestarts to write.  And who else butEileen could get totally, convincingly philosophical about watching her dogRosie take a shit?
I’vealways loved how Eileen Myles’ thoughts and language swim on the page, dartingaround here and there, impulsive and spontaneous, but also patient andfluid.  That kind of movement is gorgeouslyexamined in the title poem of her 1997 book Schoolof Fish.  At one point in Inferno, she even devotes a wholechapter to wondering what the fish inside an aquarium might be thinking and sayingto each other behind the glass.

Eileen’slatest collection of poetry, released just this year, is actually two collections, a tête-bêche bookcalled Snowflake / different streets.  During a reading at Boston’s BrooklineBooksmith earlier this month, Myles commented that the idea was for the twobooks to be shoved together “like they’re fucking.”  She also mentioned that the poems are the product of livingin two dramatically different locations; half of the poems (Snowflake) were written during her fiveyears of teaching at UC San Diego, while the other half (different streets) were written after her return to living in NewYork.  When I asked her after thereading how the places affected her poems, she responded that the effect wasquite literal, in the same way that singers from different countries in ancienttimes cultivated different styles of singing because their voices rolled andechoed differently as they yodeled and shouted across the shapes of theirrespective landscapes.
Thepoems in Snowflake actually seem tobe influenced a little more by light than by shape.  In the poem titled “Day,” Eileen re-shades her surroundingsas a child’s watercolor:
“Sheperceiveslightasa paint bynumberleapingintoadark twoapuddletothe humpofher breathing”
Thesepoems are populated equally by clusters of separately shining cars in LosAngeles and raccoons spotted on the tails of airplanes.  Myles even conducts a cute conversationwith her cat in the poem “Eileen” (“Why can / you have a / giant plate / of pasta/ and I can / no longer have / my crunchy / treats  Why / am I served / up a cold / fish plate. / you’re not /so thin / Eileen”).  Snowflake is about both attention itselfand attention to change, particularly, as in the opening poem, “Transitions”:
“what’snot technologywhat’snot seeinganarm to sayIhold theline   I holdthedayIwatch the snowflakemelting”

Asequence of poems transcribed from digital recordings in Snowflake is balanced out by a sequence of poems written with astolen, oversized pencil in differentstreets.  In “#6 in and out,”Eileen’s a “cute 50 something top” who submits a playful personal ad that alsoriffs on the aging process for queers: “Anyone / can be beautiful / at 19 or 30.  This / is life. Take a deep / breath.”  Thehilarious poem “the nervous entertainment” finds her living in the home ofcelebrated artist Catherine Opie, while other pieces trace the history andstreets of Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod; “all the places are connected /thus the endless / beauty.”  A poemabout the name of Eileen’s girlfriend contains a mighty vortex of an aestheticnotion:
“towriteisa formofaccounting&approximatepromiseinthe sunnymouthoftime.”

EileenMyles is still crafting one of the most indelible bodies of literature in our owntime.  Through gently navigatedwaves of tension, restraint, and release, the vital part of Eileen’s writing isalways — even more than its rambunctious voice — its heart.  Not a paper cut-out heart, but the real heart, bloody andraw and throbbing.  And it knowswhat its job is:  to keep the bodyof the poem alive.