Evolution

by Eileen Myles

Overview

The new poetry collection from the award-winning author of Chelsea Girls reads like “an arrival, a voice always becoming, unpinnable and queer” (Natalie Diaz, New York Times Book Review).
 
The first all-new collection of poems from Eileen Myles since 2011’s Snowflake/different streets, Evolution follows the author’s critically acclaimed Afterglow (a dog memoir), as well as a volume of selected poems, I Must Be Living Twice. In these new poems, we find the eminent, exuberant writer at the forefront of American literature, upending genre in a new vernacular that radiates insight, purpose, and risk while channeling of Quakers, Fresca, and cell phones.
 
This long-awaited new collection “lopes forward in the strutting style of the witnessing and sincere, but gorgeously nonaustere, poet in New York…The gift of Evolution is its bold depiction of the textually-rendered ‘I’-Eileen” (Kenyon Review).
 
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802146366
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	05/14/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Eileen Myles is the author of more than twenty books, including Afterglow (a dog memoir), Inferno (a poet’s novel), Chelsea Girls, and Cool For You. Myles’s many honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, four Lambda Literary Awards, the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing, as well as grants from Creative Capital (nonfiction) and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (poetry), and the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers grant.

Editorial Reviews

09/01/2018
"What's the use of being famous," Myles asks at the end of "You," a poem midway through this new collection, which includes a long-form meditation or two on the subject. There's an "acceptance speech" marking the successful end of a decades-long campaign for the U.S. presidency, for instance, and the recounting of a talk Myles gave at the Shaker Museum Feminine Mystique conference in 2017. For a well-known poet nearing 70, fame is a not an unreasonable topic, and it's considered here from many angles. The style here mashes politics writ large (Comey, Trump, the Catholic Church, Palestinian sovereignty, civil/women's/gay rights) and things more intimate (beloved dogs, the last days of Myles's mother), with a restless Myles at the center of everything—incanting in a loud and clear voice: "I think I'm kind of Morissey/ don't you/ though his sweatshirt// wouldn't be so/ cheap/ though he'd/ probably wish/ that it/ was. It's kind of impossible/ to be famous/ and not have /beautiful things./ People always give you their best/…" VERDICT Get in the car and go for a ride with Myles. You'll be entertained—never having to guess what the poet is thinking or where you're being taken.—Iris S. Rosenberg, New York

Library Journal

Evolution results from the tension between disruption and order, a recognition that change is part of the being and momentum of the self. In Eileen Myles's newest book of poetry, Evolution, we encounter an arrival, a voice always becoming, unpinnable and queer. Myles's new poems are transformations, and perhaps a culmination of the poet's previous inquiries into love, gender, poetry, America and its politics…Part of what makes queer and trans art dangerous is its willingness to wager its own future and expend the labor required to write oneself into the considerations of a nation. In Evolution, that energy builds and burns, in the quick pace of the lines, in unexpected shifts and leaps from interior to exterior, from sensuality to observation.

The New York Times Book Review - Natalie Diaz

08/20/2018
Myles (Afterglow) returns to familiar themes in her latest collection, ruminating on sex and intimacy, dogs, politics, and New York City. The collection opens with a speech that Myles delivered at a 2017 conference on female spirituality in which the poet recalls protesting the exclusion of LGBTQ marchers from the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade: “I never realized how outside I was until I realized they wouldn’t let me in.” From there, Myles moves into verse, with short, highly enjambed lines evoking a flowing stream-of-consciousness. Myles relentlessly questions, analyzes, and even loathes the self, combining fanciful reveries with non sequitur in the New York School style: “I brought/ my chalice/ up right to/ the fountain/ hi Alice/ and I drank.” The poems express a forlorn weariness of contemporary politics, including the collapse of the Occupy movement and the Trump campaign’s “Russian stuff.” Myles effectively brings vague feelings into sharp relief with surprising imagery (“If I get/ this little/ sleep/ I’m butter/ pulling/ the greasy/ details/ over everything”) and lighter moments of mockery reveal the contradictions in human behavior, such as mentioning a compliment received at the gym and simultaneously chiding an ex-lover for retweeting similar praise. Myles has long excelled at capturing outsiderness, and feelings of being lost and misunderstood are plenty evident here. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Evolution:

New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
New York Times Book Review Paperback Row Selection

“In Eileen Myles’s newest book of poetry, Evolution, we encounter an arrival, a voice always becoming, unpinnable and queer. Myles’s new poems are transformations, and perhaps a culmination of the poet’s previous inquiries into love, gender, poetry, America, and its politics . . . The form of Myles’s work rivals its subject matter in intimacy. The lines in Evolution are physical, a body unleashed but not yet comfortable and not without fear. The short lines rush down the page, movement as touch, touch as freedom.”—Natalie Diaz, New York Times Book Review

“Eileen Myles may be the closest thing we have to a celebrity poet.”—Paris Review

“Explore[s] and document the limits of language, both visual and literary.”—Artforum

“I loved Evolution . . . Poems that lope along, chatty, restless and limber.”—Olivia Laing, New Statesman

“Eileen Myles's essential poetry is the hip kid leaning against their locker secretly burning with intensity, the smartest boy in the class who doesn't care he has a scar down his face, the thing you just wish you'd said.”—Lena Dunham

“Myles’s poetry is kinetic, ecstatic, muscular, hilarious, sorrowful, valiant, original, necessary, and timeless.”—Maggie Nelson

“Lopes forward in the strutting style of the witnessing and sincere, but gorgeously nonaustere, poet in New York . . . The gift of Evolution is its bold depiction of the textually-rendered ‘I’-Eileen.”—Kenyon Review

“With the publication of their new book of poetry, Evolution, Myles explores, among other things, the loss of their mother, who died in April of last year; this current political era; past relationships; and their new dog, Honey . . . Myles [wants] people to find the accessibility of poetry: in life, in love, in Instagram, in everything.”—Vanity Fair

“Evolution, Eileen Myles’s first all-new collection of poetry since 2011, circles back to classic themes such as their love of dogs, loneliness, and parental loss. These poems, however, are also immediate and pressingly contemporary. Myles is conducting an intimate exchange with the government, peering into their computer and saying hello to whoever might be surveilling them.”—Lambda Literary

“Myles relentlessly questions, analyzes, and even loathes the self, combining fanciful reveries with non sequitur in the New York School style . . . Effectively brings vague feelings into sharp relief with surprising imagery and lighter moments of mockery reveal the contradictions in human behavior . . . Myles has long excelled at capturing outsiderness, and feelings of being lost and misunderstood are plenty evident here.”—Publishers Weekly

“Rich in vernacular and innovative line breaks, these poems ask to be read out loud . . . Myles crafts poems of a personal nature in Evolution. In very short lines, they are also reflective, contemporary, political, erotic and even aphoristic . . . In a bold collection of poems, Eileen Myles reinforces their justifiable fame as the unabashed voice of what’s left of New York’s downtown edginess.”—Shelf Awareness

Praise for Afterglow (a dog memoir)

“A mutt elegy in a million . . . Myles gets at something no other dog book I’ve read has gotten at quite this distinctly: The sense of wordless connection and spiritual expansion you feel when you love and are loved by a creature who’s not human.”—Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air, NPR

“Playful, heartfelt, wise, compassionate, fantastical and audaciously confessional.”—New York Times Book Review

“A wry, gorgeous, psychedelic effort to plumb the subject of dog-human partnership . . . Afterglow is like the Just Kids of dog books.”—New Yorker

“Cosmic, and charming . . . far-flung, and wonderfully loving.”—Boston Globe

“An ever-deepening investigation into the nature of human-being-ness, self-knowledge, and knowing things outside of yourself.”—Bookforum

“Part elegy, part meditation . . . poignant, sweeping.”—O Magazine

“Fantastical . . . wrenching.”—Rolling Stone

“[An] exquisite slapstick tragedy . . . a radical memoir.” —Village Voice

“Tender, lyrical.” —Buzzfeed

“Gritty, naturalistic . . . like a good grunge song.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“Extraordinary . . . brings language to the nonverbal intimacy of a human life lived with a dog.” —Literary Hub

“Wild and unruly . . . lively, conversational, and highly intelligent.” —Vice

“A perfect example of what happens when you mix raw language with emotion, pets with loss, and sexuality with socioculturalism.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A rare new breed of dog memoir; think Patti Smith’s Just Kids, not Josh Grogan’s Marley and Me, absinthe not saccharine.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“Poetic, heartrending, soothing, and funny.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Myles depicts the raw pathos of loss with keen insight.”—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher