Eileen Myles#Politics and teaching

Eileen Myles was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on December 9, 1949,{{cite web |url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/eileen-myles |title=Eileen Myles |publisher=The Poetry Foundation |date=n.d. |access-date=August 23, 2013 |archive-date=September 4, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130904144416/http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/eileen-myles |url-status=live }} to a family with a working-class background.{{cite web|last1=Lerner|first1=Ben|title=Eileen Myles in Conversation with Ben Lerner|url=http://lithub.com/eileen-myles-in-conversation-with-ben-lerner/|website=Literary Hub|date=September 24, 2015|access-date=February 12, 2016|archive-date=February 15, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160215091533/http://lithub.com/eileen-myles-in-conversation-with-ben-lerner/|url-status=live}} They attended Catholic schools in Arlington, Massachusetts, and graduated from UMass Boston in 1971.{{cite web|title=Eileen Myles on Poets.org|url=https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/eileen-myles|website=Poets.org|access-date=February 12, 2016|archive-date=February 14, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180214161222/https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/eileen-myles|url-status=live}}

Myles moved to New York City in 1974 with the intention of becoming a poet. In New York they participated in writing workshops held at St. Mark's Poetry Project, which promoted the idea of the "working artist."{{Cite web|url=https://brooklynrail.org/2009/07/poetry/eileen-myles-with-jeremy-sigler|title=Eileen Myles with Jeremy Sigler|last=Sigler|first=Jeremy|website=The Brooklyn Rail|access-date=March 2, 2019|date=July 9, 2009|archive-date=March 6, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190306043256/https://brooklynrail.org/2009/07/poetry/eileen-myles-with-jeremy-sigler|url-status=live}} There they studied with Alice Notley, Ted Berrigan, Paul Violi, and Bill Zavatsky, and were given a template for creating art in the context of community. There, Myles first met the poet Allen Ginsberg, whom they admired and who became the subject of several of their poems and essays.{{cite web|last1=Myles|first1=Eileen|title=Repeating Allen|url=https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/repeating-allen|website=Poets.org|date=October 8, 2010|access-date=February 12, 2016|archive-date=March 16, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160316170321/https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/repeating-allen|url-status=live}}{{cite web|title=Interview with Eileen Myles|url=http://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/eileen-myles-1#_|date=December 17, 2015|access-date=February 12, 2016|archive-date=July 8, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210708042817/https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/eileen-myles-1#_|url-status=live}} In 1979 they worked as an assistant to the poet James Schuyler.

In 1984 Myles was hired as the artistic director of St. Mark's Poetry Project, and held that position until 1986.{{Cite journal|last=Krasinski|first=Jennifer|date=December 14, 2016|title=The Poetry Project's Half-Century of Dissent|url=https://www.villagevoice.com/2016/12/14/the-poetry-projects-half-century-of-dissent/|journal=The Village Voice|access-date=March 11, 2021|archive-date=March 29, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210329114323/https://www.villagevoice.com/2016/12/14/the-poetry-projects-half-century-of-dissent/|url-status=live}} They have stated their time there gave them the opportunity to rethink the institution that influenced their early work.{{citation needed|date=January 2016}} During Reagan's presidency, 1981–1989, Myles dealt with the cuts to the NEA art budget{{Cite web|url=https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/02/ronald-reagan-birthday-nea.html|title=Remembering Ronald Reagan and the NEA|date=February 6, 2011|website=LA Times Blogs – Culture Monster|access-date=March 2, 2019|archive-date=March 6, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190306045830/https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/02/ronald-reagan-birthday-nea.html|url-status=live}} and focused their energies on broadening the aesthetic and cultural range of the St. Mark's Poetry Project. Myles' leadership of the Project represented a generational shift away from the church's base, which until then been run by the second generation members of the New York School.{{Cite news|title=A Louder Voice for Poetry: From Self-Publication in the 50s to Contests Today Poetry's Growing Voice, Starting With the Beats|last=Cotter|first=Holland|year=1998|work=The New York Times}} Program Coordinators in this period were Patricia Spears Jones, and Jessica Hagedorn, and Myles invited Alice Notley and Dennis Cooper to teach.

At the beginning of the 1991–1992 presidential election, Myles heard George H. W. Bush speak about the threat to freedom of speech posed by the dialog of activists and minoritized people. With that statement, Myles "realized there was this amazing political power to speech."{{Cite journal|last=Parker|first=Morgan|date=2014|title=Interview with Eileen Myles|url=https://www.theliteraryreview.org/book-review/interview-with-eileen-myles/|journal=The Literary Review|volume=57|issue=4|pages=178–193|access-date=March 11, 2021|archive-date=January 22, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210122035139/https://www.theliteraryreview.org/book-review/interview-with-eileen-myles/|url-status=live}} Myles then conducted an "openly female" write-in campaign for the office of President of the United States{{cite web|title=UCSD Literature Dept. faculty page|url=http://literature.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/emeriti/emyles.html|website=literature.ucsd.edu|access-date=February 12, 2016|archive-date=February 16, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160216022752/http://literature.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/emeriti/emyles.html|url-status=live}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/108095724/anthony-dellaflora-poet-takes-on/|first=Anthony|last=DellaFlora|title=Poet takes on disguise to politicize work|date=February 15, 1998|work=Albuquerque Journal|access-date=August 22, 2022|page=D2|via=Newspapers.com}} from the East Village that spiraled into a project of national interest. Part performance art, part protest,{{Cite web

| url = https://theslot.jezebel.com/a-look-back-at-eileen-myles-revolutionary-openly-femal-1752734234

| title = A Look Back at Eileen Myles' Revolutionary, 'Openly-Female' Write-In Presidential Campaign

| website = Jezebel

| last = Rothkopf

| first = Joanna

| date = January 20, 2016

| access-date = October 28, 2018

| archive-date = August 24, 2019

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20190824000552/https://theslot.jezebel.com/a-look-back-at-eileen-myles-revolutionary-openly-femal-1752734234

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}} this gesture was meant to offer an alternative glimpse into what progressive, radical, and socially committed politics could look like.

{{Cite web

| url = https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/new-york/articles/the-story-behind-new-york-city-poet-eileen-myles-presidential-bid/

| title = The Story Behind New York City Poet Eileen Myles' Presidential Bid

| website = The Culture Trip

| date = October 9, 2017

| access-date = October 28, 2018

| archive-date = October 28, 2018

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20181028151538/https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/new-york/articles/the-story-behind-new-york-city-poet-eileen-myles-presidential-bid/

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}} Zoe Leonard's 1992 poem, "I want a president", which begins with the line: "I want a dyke for president", was written to celebrate Myles's presidential run.{{Cite web|url=https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/03/16/zoe-leonard-archivist-of-feeling/|title=Zoe Leonard: Archivist of Feeling|last=Traps|first=Yevgeniya|date=March 16, 2018|website=The Paris Review|access-date=November 4, 2018|archive-date=November 4, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181104125838/https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/03/16/zoe-leonard-archivist-of-feeling/|url-status=live}}

Beginning in 2002, Myles began a five-year stint as a professor of writing at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). UCSD funded the research and travel grant that enabled the creation of Inferno (2010), as well as Hell, an opera composed by Michael Webster, for which Myles wrote the libretto.{{cite web |author=Myles, Eileen |year=2010 |title=Eileen Myles: Workshop Productions of Hell |publisher=The University of California Institute for Research in the Arts |location=Santa Barbara, CA, USA |quote=About the Project: Workshop Productions of Hell was a collaborative project undertaken by Eileen Myles, Professor of Writing in the Literature Department at UCSD, and Los Angeles composer Michael Webster. The three main goals of the project were to enliven opera in America, to return poetry to a place of central importance in spectacle, and to investigate the conditions of speech post September 11. |url=http://www.ucira.ucsb.edu/workshop-productions-of-hell/ |access-date=February 22, 2021 |archive-date=January 24, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124022110/http://www.ucira.ucsb.edu/workshop-productions-of-hell/ |url-status=live }} Since leaving UCSD in 2007, Myles has been a Visiting Writer at Bard College, Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Montana-Missoula, Columbia University School of the Arts, and New York University.

In 2016, Myles endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in a BuzzFeed piece entitled Hillary Clinton: The Leader You Want When The World Ends.{{Cite web

| url = https://www.buzzfeed.com/eileenmyles/hillary-clinton-the-leader-you-want-when-the-world-ends#.xo66GNAJ6B

| title = Hillary Clinton: The Leader You Want When The World Ends

| website = BuzzFeed

| date = February 23, 2016

| access-date = February 26, 2016

| archive-date = February 26, 2016

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160226005248/http://www.buzzfeed.com/eileenmyles/hillary-clinton-the-leader-you-want-when-the-world-ends#.xo66GNAJ6B

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}} Myles was also approached by Clinton's campaign to write a poem, as part of "Artists for Hillary", a mostly-female group which included Jenny Holzer and Maya Lin, whose creative statements were testament to their support for Clinton's presidential bid.{{Cite web|url=https://www.hillaryforamericadesign.com/artist-collaborations/|title=Artist collaborations|website=Hillary for America Design 2016|access-date=November 4, 2018|archive-date=November 4, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181104085528/https://www.hillaryforamericadesign.com/artist-collaborations/|url-status=live}} Myles's poem was entitled MOMENTUM 2016.{{Cite news|url=https://i-d.co/article/exclusive-eileen-myles-explains-their-impassioned-new-poem-for-hillary/|title=eileen myles explains their impassioned new poem for hillary|date=November 4, 2016|work=I-d|access-date=November 4, 2018|archive-date=November 4, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181104125919/https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/7xbzvg/exclusive-eileen-myles-explains-their-impassioned-new-poem-for-hillary|url-status=live}}

{{expand section | sources for all the OR and editorial description, and information to fill the gaps in the chronology (leaving gaps of a decade only when, indeed, no poetry was produced) | small = no|date=January 2016}}

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By their own account, Myles moved from Boston to New York in 1974 "to be a poet," where they became associated with a group of poets at St. Mark's Poetry Project.{{cite book | author = Clay, Steven & Rodney Phillips | year = 1998 | title = A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, 1960–1980 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=jpjfAAAAMAAJ | location = New York, NY, USA | publisher = New York Public Library and Granary Books | pages = 39, 184, 223ff | isbn = 9781887123198 | quote = St. Mark's ... this country's premier venue for new and experimental poetries | access-date = January 24, 2016 | archive-date = February 13, 2016 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160213063405/https://books.google.com/books?id=jpjfAAAAMAAJ | url-status = live }}{{rp|184}} Myles's first book, The Irony of the Leash, was published by Jim Brodey from the St. Mark's Poetry Project in 1978.{{cite book |title=Encyclopedia of the New York School Poets |first=Terence |last=Diggory |year=2009 |page=75 |publisher=Infobase |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Mgsgw2xe-F0C&q=Myles%20%22The%20Irony%20of%20the%20Leash%22%20St.%20Mark's%20Poetry%20Project%201978&pg=PT91 |isbn=9781438119052 |access-date=October 6, 2020 |archive-date=July 8, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210708042725/https://books.google.com/books?id=Mgsgw2xe-F0C&q=Myles+%22The+Irony+of+the+Leash%22+St.+Mark%27s+Poetry+Project+1978&pg=PT91 |url-status=live }}

In 1977 and 1979, Myles published issues of dodgems, a literary magazine, a title referring, in the vernacular of Great Britain, to bumper cars,{{cite web|url=http://www.thebrits.com/businesses/slang-meanings/|title=R|date=August 20, 2009|work=thebrits.com|access-date=January 24, 2016|archive-date=January 31, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160131040836/http://www.thebrits.com/businesses/slang-meanings/|url-status=live}} specifically those of Revere Beach, MA. The title is said to serve as a metonym for the collision of aesthetic differences that characterized the poetry scene of that time. The dodgems issues featured poems by John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Charles Bernstein, as well as a letter from Lily Tomlin and an angry note from a neighbor; both issues are referenced in the book, A Secret Location on the Lower East Side—Adventures in Writing: 1960–1980, (which also describes St. Mark's), and were exhibited in vitrines in the Library's 1998 show on the same subject.

Myles's next collection, A Fresh Young Voice From the Plains (1981), earned their first major review, by Jane Bosveld in Ms.{{cite journal | author = Bosveld, Jane | year = 1982 | title = Poetry in Short: A Fresh Young Voice from the Plains and Sappho's Boat | journal = Ms. Magazine | type = print | issue = September }}{{verify source|date=January 2016}} Not Me (1991) is Myles's most popular collection of poetry. It contains Myles work, "An American Poem,"{{cite web|url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/240258|title=An American Poem|date=n.d.|work=poetryfoundation.org|access-date=January 24, 2016|archive-date=January 30, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160130212932/http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/240258|url-status=live}} in which they fictionalize their identity and claims to be a "Kennedy", and comfortably addresses politics in the work.{{cite web |url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53965/an-american-poem |title=An American Poem |last=Myles |first=Eileen |website=Poetry Foundation |date=November 2017 |access-date=April 16, 2021 |archive-date=April 16, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210416174226/https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53965/an-american-poem |url-status=live }} They first performed the work at P.S. 122 in New York City, during their tenure at St. Mark's. Since then "An American Poem" has been filmed and shown in film festivals all over the world, screening in New York and other major cities. It has been included, in translation, in German, Russian, and Italian anthologies of American writing. The trajectory of "An American Poem" is documented in Myles's novel Inferno (2010).

Myles produced Maxfield Parrish/early and new poems (1995), a collection of both new and selected poems on the theme of the surreality of sex.{{cite journal |last1=Cooper |first1=Dennis |title=Top Ten Dennis Cooper's Real Life Rock |journal=Artforum |date=Summer 1996 |volume=34 |issue=10 |page=26 |url=https://www.eileenmyles.com/maxrev.php |access-date=October 23, 2018 |archive-date=October 24, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181024035307/https://www.eileenmyles.com/maxrev.php |url-status=live }} In the same year, Myles co-edited The New Fuck You: Adventures in Lesbian Reading (1995) with Liz Kotz, which is described as having a multi-genre approach and postmodern focus on reading rather than identity, and which is said {{By whom|date=May 2025}} to have offered something different from mainstream gay and lesbian poetry anthologies of the 1990s. Soon after, School of Fish (1997) appeared, the first work wherein Myles's dog, Rosie is featured, where Rosie served as a second camera in the poem's field of vision.

Myles published Skies (2000), a project begun in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where the poet described the sky becoming "a new character in my life."{{cite news|last1=Brown|first1=Susan Rand|title=Counter Culture Poet Eileen Myles Reads in Provincetown|url=http://www.patriotledger.com/article/20151008/entertainmentlife/151007145|access-date=August 21, 2016|work=The Patriot Ledger|date=October 8, 2015|archive-date=August 28, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160828203039/http://www.patriotledger.com/article/20151008/entertainmentlife/151007145|url-status=live}} The book is framed by a transcript of a panel at The Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts featuring Helen Miranda Wilson, Frances Richard, John Kelly, Molly Benjamin, and Jack Pierson, who each spoke about their own relation to the sky. On My Way (2001) concludes with an essay about speech and class, "The End of New England."{{cite journal | author = Unknown | year = 2002 | journal = Tool a Magazine | editor = Erik Sweet | issue = September | url = http://www.toolamagazine.com/Myles.html | title = Eileen Myles 'A review' for [of] Skies (Black Sparrow Press) [and] my way (Faux Press) | access-date = January 23, 2016 | quote = An earlier version of this citation indicated the author as 'Lori Quillen,' but this is not supported at the citation. | archive-date = March 3, 2016 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160303222019/http://www.toolamagazine.com/Myles.html | url-status = live }}

Snowflake / Different Streets (2012) uses the technique of dos-à-dos binding to combine two distinct collections of poetry in the same physical book.{{cite journal|last1=Teare|first1=Brian|title=Everything Moves Close: New Poems by Eileen Myles|journal=Los Angeles Review of Books|date=August 24, 2012|url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/everything-moves-close-new-poems-by-eileen-myles/#!|access-date=August 21, 2016|archive-date=August 22, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160822114746/https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/everything-moves-close-new-poems-by-eileen-myles/#!|url-status=live}} As Ian Bodkin writes, Myles' poems "navigat[e] the ever-insular landscape of our technological culture that invades moments of quiet thought" in Snowflake, then "offers a sense of return to the people and places of intimacy, connections that bring her back to this world" in different streets.{{cite journal | author = Bodkin, Ian | year = 2012 | journal = 491 | issue = April 26 | url = http://www.491magazine.com/review-by-ian-bodkin-eileen-myles-snowflake-different-streets/ | title = Review ... : Eileen Myles' Snowflake/different streets | access-date = January 23, 2016 | archive-date = January 29, 2016 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160129161144/http://www.491magazine.com/review-by-ian-bodkin-eileen-myles-snowflake-different-streets/ | url-status = live }} In the LA Review of Books, Brian Teare notes: "Though the book contains plenty of autobiographical detail concerning Myles' life as a writer and lesbian, such details remain themselves, no longer coalescing into myth. Instead, the book's saturated with this desire to gesture toward "it," to somehow get fragmentary words to capture some essential aspect of "the thing," and Myles' genius lies in making the grand gesture that includes the trivial detail and the sublime at once, their juxtaposition underscoring how we are small and made large by connection, paradoxically isolate and dependent.{{cite journal | author = Teare, Brian | year = 2012 | url = https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/everything-moves-close-new-poems-by-eileen-myles | journal = Los Angeles Review of Books | title = Everything Moves Close: New Poems by Eileen Myles [Review of Snowflakes/different streets] | issue = August 24 | access-date = 23 January 2016 | archive-date = January 28, 2016 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160128100519/https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/everything-moves-close-new-poems-by-eileen-myles | url-status = live }}

Though Myles's primary intention was to be a poet, they have stated that they were also moved by the New Journalism of the sixties and seventies and the art writing tradition by poets of the New York School. In the 1980s, Myles began to publish personal journalism, book reviews, and art reviews. Early columns appeared in the Poetry Project Newsletter; their essay "I Hate Mimeo" called for an end to the mimeograph, which was used to pring that newsletter.{{cn|date=December 2024}} Myles's first book, The Irony of the Leash (1978), was produced on the mimeograph machine at St. Mark's Poetry Project.{{cn|date=December 2024}} In the 1990s they wrote a monthly column in Paper.{{cn|date=December 2024}}

Myles' early book and theater reviews appeared in New York Native, Outweek, and Out, and they were a notable figure on the poetry and queer art scene of the 1980s and 1990s on the Lower East Side. Later, Myles would publish essays and other article in the Village Voice, The Nation, Artforum, Parkett, and Art in America.

In 2006 Myles received an Warhol/Creative Capital grant, which funded their first collection of nonfiction, The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art (2009).{{Cite web|url=https://www.artswriters.org/grant/grantees/grantee/eileen_myles|title=Eileen Myles – Grantees – Arts Writers Grant Program|website=artswriters.org|access-date=October 13, 2018|archive-date=October 14, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181014010208/https://www.artswriters.org/grant/grantees/grantee/eileen_myles|url-status=live}} The title essay from this collection, "Iceland," has been described as part travel essay, part personal essay, and part inquiry into the nature of how landscape and writing affect each other.

Myles's first short story collection, Chelsea Girls (1994),{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/29/books/review-in-i-must-be-living-twice-and-chelsea-girls-eileen-myles-ruminates.html?_r=0 |first=Dwight |last=Garner |date=September 29, 2015 |newspaper=The New York Times |title=Review of Myles' Chelsea Girls and I Must Be Living Twice}} includes "Bread and Water", the oldest story in the collection and an account of life in the East Village in the late 1970s and early 1980s.{{Cite news|url=https://therumpus.net/2011/04/the-rumpus-interview-with-eileen-myles-2/|title=The Rumpus Interview with Eileen Myles|date=April 28, 2011|work=The Rumpus.net|access-date=October 13, 2018|archive-date=October 13, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181013211914/https://therumpus.net/2011/04/the-rumpus-interview-with-eileen-myles-2/|url-status=live}} Raymond Foye called it "the quintessential memoir of the Lower East Side."{{Cite news|url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/these-schmucks-were-geniuses-poet-eileen-myles-remembers-her-new-york-111/|title='These Schmucks Were Geniuses!': Poet Eileen Myles Remembers Her New York|date=October 4, 2015|work=Vice|access-date=October 13, 2018|archive-date=October 13, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181013211813/https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vdxpm9/these-schmucks-were-geniuses-poet-eileen-myles-remembers-her-new-york-111|url-status=live}} In an interview with Michael Hafford, Myles stated that "Bread and Water" was "literally like a copy of my life at that moment."{{Cite news|url=https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/eileen-myles|title=The Life of Eileen Myles – Interview Magazine|date=September 30, 2015|access-date=October 13, 2018|archive-date=October 14, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181014011625/https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/eileen-myles|url-status=live}} In "Chelsea Girls", the title story, Myles chronicles their time as the assistant to poet James Schuyler in the Chelsea Hotel; their intergenerational exchange has been the subject of scholarship by Dianne Chisholm and José Esteban Muñoz.{{Cite book|title=Queer Constellations: Subcultural Space In The Wake Of The City|last=Chisholm|first=Dianne|publisher=University of Minnesota Press|year=2004|pages=101–144}}{{Cite book|title=Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity|last=Muñoz|first=José Esteban|publisher=New York University Press|year=2009|pages=13–15}} In a review in The Los Angeles Times, Erika Taylor wrote: "Myles' collection of short stories is so unabashedly solipsistic, so confident in its own self-absorption, that she takes chances and has payoffs few other writers would be willing to risk. . . It would be easy to dismiss "Chelsea Girls" as poetic hot air if Myles weren't so smart and funny."{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/108096401/erika-taylor-in-brief-los-angeles/|first=Erika|last=Taylor|title=In Brief|date=November 6, 1994|work=Los Angeles Times|access-date=August 22, 2022|page=6-Book Review|via=Newspapers.com}}

Myles's second full-length work, Cool for You: a nonfiction novel (2000), catalogs abject institutional spaces of an "insider", in opposition to the male artist as an "outsider".{{cite journal | author = Kellner, Amy | year = 1998 | title = Eileen Myles, 1998 [interview] | journal = Index Magazine | url = http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/eileen_myles.shtml | format = online | access-date = January 23, 2016 | archive-date = March 3, 2016 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160303225855/http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/eileen_myles.shtml | url-status = live }} Among these spaces are school, family, and various bad jobs; the extreme insider of the book is Myles's maternal grandmother Nellie Riordan Myles, who spent the last 17 years of her life in a state mental hospital in Massachusetts. Also included in Cool for You{{'}}s inventory is an imaginary one—a chapter that describes the Solar System from the perspective of a ten-year-old version of Myles themself, Myles's first foray into fantasy writing. Cool for You received widespread recognition and was reviewed in The New York Times{{cite news|last1=Powers|first1=Ann|title=Neverland and Beyond|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/29/books/neverland-and-beyond.html|access-date=August 21, 2016|work=The New York Times|date=July 29, 2001|archive-date=August 27, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160827234029/http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/29/books/neverland-and-beyond.html|url-status=live}} and The Nation.{{cite journal|last1=Kraus|first1=Chris|title=Girls, Interrupted: Chris Kraus Reviews "Cool For You" by Eileen Myles|url=https://www.thenation.com/article/girls-interrupted/|journal=The Nation|access-date=August 21, 2016|date=December 14, 2000|archive-date=September 18, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160918222635/https://www.thenation.com/article/girls-interrupted/|url-status=live}} Charles Shipman, in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrote: "Although the writing is sometimes too fragmented to follow and occasionally becomes a tad melodramatic (oh, those awful nuns!), Myles has an undeniable gift for capturing the small details and mundane events that shape our lives. She's also capable of writing with tremendous sensitivity, and because she never slips into sentimentality, her tender passages are all the more affecting. . . By the end of "Cool for You" you do feel as though you know Eileen Myles, and you're glad you took the time to listen to her story".{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/108101238/charles-shipman-review-of-eileen-myles/|first=Charles|last=Shipman|title=Author's sense of alienaton shades melancholy novel|date=November 5, 2000|work=St. Louis Post-Dispatch|access-date=August 22, 2022|page=C10|via=Newspapers.com}}

Inferno (A Poet's Novel) (2010) fictionalizes the life of Dante, and Myles stated in an interview with John Oakes that the vernacular language of his Inferno is their "biggest argument for the way I write."{{Cite web|url=http://www.orbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/media/media/ConversationWithEileenMyles.pdf|title=Bad Mirror: An Interview With Eileen Myles|last=Oakes|first=John|access-date=October 13, 2018|archive-date=October 14, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181014053121/http://www.orbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/media/media/ConversationWithEileenMyles.pdf|url-status=live}} Craig Epplin, in The New Inquiry, wrote the book is Myles's attempt at sketching alternative sorts of existence in common. They do so not through simple prescription, but rather by modeling the act of assembly itself".{{cite journal | last = Epplin | first = Craig | url = http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/assemblage-required-eileen-myles/ | title = Assemblage Required | journal = The New Inquiry | year = 2012 | format = online | issue = July 17 | access-date = 23 January 2016 | archive-date = February 17, 2013 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130217000350/http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/assemblage-required-eileen-myles/ | url-status = live }} It was awarded a 2011 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction.{{Cite news|url=http://www.lambdaliterary.org/23rd-annual-lambda-literary-award-finalists-and-winners/|title=23rd Annual Lambda Literary Award Finalists and Winners|last=Reese|first=Jenn|date=March 15, 2012|work=Lambda Literary|access-date=October 13, 2018|archive-date=June 8, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190608020743/http://www.lambdaliterary.org/23rd-annual-lambda-literary-award-finalists-and-winners/|url-status=live}} On September 29, 2015, HarperCollins reissued Myles's out-of-print collection Chelsea Girls.{{Cite web|title = After 19 Books and a Presidential Bid, Eileen Myles Gets Her Due|url = http://www.vulture.com/2015/09/after-19-books-eileen-myles-gets-her-due.html|website = Vulture| date=September 24, 2015 |access-date = October 3, 2015|archive-date = July 19, 2017|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170719090219/http://www.vulture.com/2015/09/after-19-books-eileen-myles-gets-her-due.html|url-status = live}}

In 1979 Myles founded the Lost Texans Collective with Elinor Nauen and Barbara McKay. That year the group produced Joan of Arc a spiritual entertainment and would produce Patriarchy, a play in 1980.

Later solo performances include "Leaving New York (1989), Life (1991), and Summer in Russia (1996), which were performed at P.S. 122, Judson Church.

Myles's later plays, Feeling Blue parts 1, 2, and 3, Modern Art, and Our Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, written for Alina Troyano, were all produced at WOW Cafe and P.S. 122.

Since the early eighties Myles has toured and read their own work extensively. In late 1988 they traveled with poet and memoirist Jim Carroll on a tour sponsored by Lila Acheson Wallace. In the nineties Myles toured Germany with Kathy Acker, Lynne Tillman, Richard Hell, and Chris Kraus. Since 1997 Myles has frequently toured with LGBT performance group Sister Spit.{{cite web|title=Sister Spit – Meet the '97 Ladies!|url=http://www.sisterspit.com/ladies.html|website=Sister Spit official site|access-date=February 12, 2016|archive-date=February 10, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160210022606/http://www.sisterspit.com/ladies.html|url-status=live}}{{cite web|last1=Rathe|first1=Adam|title=Tea and Spit|url=http://www.out.com/entertainment/art-books/2012/09/04/michelle-tea-sister-spit-city-lights|work=Out Magazine|date=September 4, 2012 |access-date=February 12, 2016|archive-date=January 15, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160115011147/http://www.out.com/entertainment/art-books/2012/09/04/michelle-tea-sister-spit-city-lights|url-status=live}}

Myles appears on three episodes in the second season of the TV series Transparent in 2015{{cn|date=December 2024}} and in 2024 they appeared in Andrea Luka Zimmerman's film [https://thewappingproject.org/commissions/wayfaring-stranger/ Wayfaring Stranger].

• Lambda Book Award, 1995, 1998
• The Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing, 2015
• Creative Capital Award, 2016
• Bill Whitehead Award, 2020

• Cool for You. New York: Soft Skull Press, 2000.
• Inferno (A Poet's Novel). New York: OR Books, 2010.

• Bread and Water. New York: Hanuman Books, 1986.
• 1969. New York: Hanuman Books, 1989.
• Chelsea Girls. Santa Rosa, California: Black Sparrow Press, 1994. Republished alongside I Must Be Living Twice. Ecco, 2015.

• The Irony of the Leash. Jim Brodey Books, 1978.
• Polar Ode (with Anne Waldman). New York: Dead Duke Books, 1979.
• A Fresh Young Voice from the Plains. New York: Power Mad Press, 1981.{{cite web |url=https://electricliterature.com/eileen-myles-twice-on-eileen-myles-i-must-be-living-twice-and-chelsea-girls/ |title=Eileen Myles, Twice: On Eileen Myles' I Must Be Living Twice and Chelsea Girls |date=October 19, 2015 |first=Jeva |last=Lange |publisher=Electric Lit |accessdate=December 28, 2024}}
• Sappho's Boat. Los Angeles: Little Caesar, 1982.
• Not Me. New York: Semiotext(e), 1991.
• Maxfield Parrish: Early and New Poems. Santa Rosa, California: Black Sparrow, 1995.
• School of Fish, Santa Rosa, California: Black Sparrow Press, 1997.
• Skies: Poems. Santa Rosa, California: Black Sparrow Press, 2001.
• on my way. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Faux Press, 2001.
• Tow (with drawings by artist Larry C. Collins). New York: Lospeccio Press, 2005.
• Sorry, Tree (poems). Seattle: Wave Books, 2007.
• Snowflake/Different Streets. Seattle: Wave Books, 2012.
• I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems. Powells Books, 2015.
• Evolution. Grove Press, 2018.{{Cite book |url=https://groveatlantic.com/book/evolution/ |title=Evolution | isbn=978-0-8021-2850-8 |access-date=March 11, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210308144402/https://groveatlantic.com/book/evolution/ |archive-date=March 8, 2021 |url-status=live |last1=Myles |first1=Eileen |date=2018 |publisher=Grove Press }}

• The New Fuck You: Adventures in Lesbian Reading (co-edited with Liz Kotz). New York: Semiotext(e), MIT Press, 1995.
• The Importance of Being Iceland (art writing). New York: Semiotext(e), MIT Press, 2009.{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/108201896/matthew-gilbert-a-dogs-life-not/|first=Matthew|last=Gilbert|title=A dog's life? Not exactly.|date=September 17, 2017|work=Boston Globe|access-date=August 23, 2022|page=N15|via=Newspapers.com}}
• For Now. Yale University Press, 2020.{{Cite web|title=For Now {{!}} Yale University Press|url=https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300244649/now|access-date=2021-03-26|website=yalebooks.yale.edu|archive-date=April 20, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210420120013/https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300244649/now|url-status=live}}

• {{Cite book|title=Dear Lia|publisher=Belladonna Collaborative|year=2011|location=Brooklyn, NY}}{{Cite journal|last=Myles|first=Eileen|date=February 4, 2011|title=Dear Lia|url=http://www.belladonnaseries.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/128c-Eileen-Myles-2011-1.pdf|journal=Belladonna Prose Event|publisher=Belladonna Collaborative|volume=128|access-date=March 11, 2021|archive-date=July 8, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210708042729/http://www.belladonnaseries.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/128c-Eileen-Myles-2011-1.pdf|url-status=live}}
• {{Cite book |title=Pencil Poems |publisher=Chax Press |year=2011 |location=Tucson}}{{Cite web|title=Eileen Myles [ USA ]|url=https://www.literaturfestival.com/autoren-en/autoren-2005-en/eileen-myles|url-status=live|access-date=March 11, 2021|website=internationales literaturfestival, berlin|archive-date=July 8, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210708042728/https://www.literaturfestival.com/autoren-en/autoren-2005-en/eileen-myles}}
• Wayfaring Stranger. 2024{{Cite web |title=Wayfaring Stranger |url=https://thewappingproject.org/commissions/wayfaring-stranger/ |access-date=2025-02-08 |website=The Wapping Project |language=en-GB}}

• Pathetic Literature (collection). New York: Grove Press, 2022. {{ISBN|9780802157157}}{{Cite web |title=Pathetic Literature |url=https://groveatlantic.com/book/pathetic-literature/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230927180618/https://groveatlantic.com/book/pathetic-literature/ |archive-date=2023-09-27 |access-date=2023-09-27 |website=Grove Atlantic |language=en}}

Their name appears in the lyrics of the Le Tigre song "Hot Topic."{{Cite web|url=https://slate.com/culture/2019/10/hot-topic-lyrics-le-tigre-who-is.html|title=57 Champions of Queer Feminism, All Name-Dropped in One Impossibly Catchy Song|first=Tammy|last=Oler|date=October 31, 2019|website=Slate Magazine|access-date=December 8, 2020|archive-date=November 29, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201129211533/https://slate.com/culture/2019/10/hot-topic-lyrics-le-tigre-who-is.html|url-status=live}}

The second season of the TV series Transparent featured a character based on Myles.{{Cite journal|last=Harp|first=Jerry|date=2017|title=Uncanny Eileen Myles|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/645726|journal=Pleiades: Literature in Context|language=en|volume=37|issue=1S|pages=16–19|doi=10.1353/plc.2017.0059|s2cid=193770392|issn=2470-1971|access-date=March 11, 2021|archive-date=June 3, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180603034109/https://muse.jhu.edu/article/645726|url-status=live|url-access=subscription}}

Myles appears in the film Masculinity/Femininity (2014).{{cite web |url=https://afterellen.com/masculinityfemininity-takes-a-super-8-to-gender-studies/ |title=Masculinity/Femininity Takes a Super 8 to Gender Studies |first=Marcie |last=Bianco |date=May 20, 2014 |accessdate=December 28, 2024 |publisher=After Ellen}}

• List of poets portraying sexual relations between women

{{Reflist}}

{{Commons category|Eileen Myles}}

• {{Official website}}
• [http://therumpus.net/2009/12/the-rumpus-interview-with-eileen-myles/ "The Rumpus Interview with Poetry Rock Star Eileen Myles"], December 2, 2009
• [http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/an-icelandic-personal-culture-an-interview-with-eileen-myles/ "An Icelandic Personal Culture: An Interview with Eileen Myles"], 3:AM Magazine January 2, 2009
• [https://camera-austria.at/en/zeitschrift/146-2019/ Eileen Myles, the elevator], in: Camera Austria International 146 | 2019

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{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Myles, Eileen}}

Category:1949 births

Category:Living people

Category:Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction winners

Category:American lesbian writers

Category:People from Arlington, Massachusetts

Category:University of California, San Diego faculty

Category:University of Massachusetts Boston alumni

Category:Performance art in New York City

Category:American LGBTQ poets

Category:LGBTQ people from Massachusetts

Category:American women poets

Category:Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry winners

Category:20th-century American poets

Category:20th-century American women writers

Category:21st-century American poets

Category:21st-century American women writers

Category:Lesbian memoirists

Category:American LGBTQ academics

Category:Bard College faculty

Category:Naropa University faculty

Category:Washington University in St. Louis faculty

Category:University of Montana faculty

Category:Columbia University faculty

Category:New York University faculty