Eileen Myles
“A review” for
Skies- Black
Sparrow Press
on my way- Faux Press (fauxpress.com)
Skies
1.
A few months ago, while crossing the
parking lot of the local CVS here in Albany, I came across
two or three discarded photos on the ground. I figured, there
is some kind of story behind this, so I took them home. One
photo I kept; it looked like a picture of a spiral notebook
submerged in aquarium water, or just a row of track lights
upside down and paralyzed— at any rate, it sat on my
nightstand for a few weeks, no doubt keeping company with a
few pockets-full of change and a stack of books to be read.
Somehow, it became a bookmark as I made my way through both
of Eileen Myles’ excellent poetry collections: Skies,
and on my way, both of which were published last year.
The cover of Skies, published by Black Sparrow, is a
great painting by Douglas Padgett, a beach ball sailing
through the air- this is one of my favorite covers in recent
memory. on my way is published by Faux, which is
based out of the Boston area; I am glad that Faux Press has
picked up some of the more talented writers out there and is
publishing their work.
2
“Language / takes the size / of
your / life.” ( I love that line)
Skies begins (and picks up at the
end of the collection) with an interesting panel discussion
held at Schoolhouse Center in Provincetown on August 8, 1999.
Here, Myles explains that she has been spending more time
away from the stone of the city, and was growing accustomed
to the breadth of air and skies afforded in spacious and
ocean-air laden Provincetown. “I was overwhelmed with
this sky thing and it’s become a new character in my
life…” The first 10-20 pages of poems, which seem
interconnected (if anything, only by their absence of
titles—plays with the sky motif, which continues
throughout the book, often as a rhythmic marker in the poems.
The collection never loses its steam, keeping to a poetical
style on the page that readers of Myles have grown to know
and love: skinny lines packed with images.
“…I saw a yellowish sky
probably dirty and blue / scooped clouds with a thin plane
slipping through like / a tiny neon fish in my aquarium when
I was ten.” A scheme of colors opens up in this first
section and I feel the openness that is often there in the
absence of cities and traffic jams. Myles has always
balanced a true toughness with beauty in her writing, and the
poems of Skies, in their brevity and imagery, allow
the reader to experience a certain kind of
breathing/movement, which has an openness, but sometimes a
reflective sadness. “I was saved / from living / by
these / boxes I / keep things/ in /cities” (which is
followed by the words “lives” and histories”
crossed out.) Perhaps it is the crossing out of certain
thoughts and memories that allow us to open things up.
3.
“How I see / is in constant /
danger”
One is allowed a new type of living
through a poem. Here, like in Schuyler, there is an absolute
confidence in the experience of the imagination. It is as if
the skies are an entrance to something. The world there is
familiar and comforting, but never still. “I
haven’t written / a single cloud / this week.” The
poems go from waxing metaphysical to describing memories of
what seems to be in the past, with the poet making notes
about age and looking back: “I should take everything /
back / my smokes & my youth / but I can’t.”
This book reminds me so much of a place that I like to go to
in Rockport, Massachusetts. There is a path through the woods
where if you go past a quarry, it takes you out to a spot
where you can see all the way to New Hampshire on one side,
and then over to the town of Rockport on the other. It is
here that the skies are so expansive that you realize your
physical space in the world, and to me, this space seems to
be similar to the place I experience with this book.
“My mind’s pretty juicy /
pretty crayon- / y / Full moon.” (yes!)
on my way
on my way is a shorter book,
ending with an essay about speech and class, “The End of
New England,” which includes a not to be missed
discussion of the nuances of New England speech.
“and can we please spend a moment
on the sweetness of the pronunciation of h-a-r-d, hard, the
soft ‘a’ sound that the ‘r’ gets subsumed
in, and the ‘d’ becomes something that is so quick,
just try it, if you say hard with a hard r then your mouth
has been sliding towards that d around a little corner of
‘rrrrs’ and you almost pop the ‘d’ but in
New England working class the hard d is almost more like a t,
the tongue hits the roof of the mouth so quick and
birdlike…”
This collection stands as a good
companion to Skies, with the same bigness, the same
open music. “all my life / the sky history / careening /
around the pin / of me /” Like earlier collections of
her poetry, as well as her short stories and novel, you can
feel her moving away and towards something at the same time
(yes I know, what? but it makes sense to me.) As in
O’Hara or Whalen, there is a pattern of perception that
can hop into your head, and mean something different each
separate time you read the poem. One of the things I like the
best about Ted Berrigan, is that there is a familiarity to
some of his poems; such is the same with Myles, with new
reads, I feel I am returning to something. I anticipate her
new works as if they were serialized chapters in a longer
work and the space I create with the poem is shared, for
Myles is a writer who gives—
“there’s / a hole in the / sky
/ is holes / red leaking / from the red place /”
I swear every third car / riding on the
road is a little green car /”
“branches / against blue sky
/”
“The incandescence / of poetry / is
a result / of the / moment of / being alive /”
Some of my favorites in this book
include “Today’s Garden,”
“Testimony,” and “A Mixed Experience.”
Sept 2002
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