Eileen Myles – Quotes

People loved to talk

People loved to talk about how Frank O’Hara didn’t really care about getting published. That doesn’t jibe with my experience. Eileen Myles

When people decide to talk publicly about poetry as an art form and how it’s received, they often get very abject about it: \”Nobody reads poetry,\” and then a thousand people write back, \”No, we read poetry.\” There’s an abundance of this negative preaching to the choir, and it’s very similar to the experience I’m … Read more

I think poets are

I think poets are supposed to be writing for television and film. I grew up in the day of early TV that was so raw and funny, and I think we’re in the next important moment of television, where it’s really telling the epic of the culture like Charles Dickens was doing in the 19th … Read more

I really just love

I really just love reading. It’s my favorite thing, performing my poems live. Eileen Myles

I wonder, would I

I wonder, would I have transitioned from female to male if I was 30 years younger? Possibly. But if I had been born even 30 years later, because it seems like the technology will only get better, it seems like one might not ever need to settle down at all. Eileen Myles

I\\’m a poet born

I’m a poet born in the era of Andy Warhol and a generation that wanted to be famous. Eileen Myles

I was a working-class

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 Myles

Art feels like it

Art feels like it has this frame, and it’s either outside or inside. Eileen Myles

As a reader I

As a reader I feel included a lot in Julie Carr’s hard and beautiful book. I can pretty much hear its author speak—a whispering that enables us into its world . . . a masterfully sutured journey, painfully useful. Sarah—Of Fragments and Lines is a book I know I will return to. And urge it … Read more

People love discovering you.

People love discovering you. The thing about not being historically a mainstream writer is that everyone feels like you’re theirs, you’re their friend. Eileen Myles