I was a working-class kid from Boston. But I never lost my accent because I felt like that was what I was doing. I didn't have to perform Woody Guthrie like Bob Dylan did in the '60s, I just had to make myself be Eileen Myles and let that be my shield.
Eileen MylesWomen aren't physically afraid of men; women are genetically afraid of men. It's happened for such a long time.
Eileen MylesLiterature is love. I think it went like this: drawings in the cave, sounds in the cave, songs in the cave, songs about us. Later, stories about us. Part of what we always did was have sex and fight about it and break each otherโs hearts. I guess thereโs other kinds of love too. Great friendships. Working together. But poetry and novels are lists of our devotions. We love the feel of making the marks as the feelings are rising and falling. Living in literature and love is the best thing there is. Youโre always home.
Eileen MylesI hope you all find yourselves sleeping with someone you love, maybe not all of the time, but a lot of the time. The touch of a foot in the night is sincere. I hope you like your work, I hope thereโs mystery and poetry in your life โ not even poems, but patterns. I hope you can see them. Often these patterns will wake you up, and you will know that you are alive, again and again.
Eileen MylesPart of the glamour of being a poet was always this long reach into the future. You knew you were managing time.
Eileen MylesAs a reader I feel included a lot in Julie Carrโs hard and beautiful book. I can pretty much hear its author speakโa whispering that enables us into its world . . . a masterfully sutured journey, painfully useful. SarahโOf Fragments and Lines is a book I know I will return to. And urge it on my friends who have lives too and write in them.
Eileen Myles