I Must Be Living Twice
New and Selected Poems 1975 - 2014
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- 7,49 €
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- 7,49 €
Publisher Description
A collection of thrilling verse, including both new poems and beloved favourites, from the celebrated poet, modern cult icon, and author of nineteen books including Chelsea Girls.
Eileen Myles' work is known for its blend of reality and fiction, the sublime and the ephemeral. At once intimate and open-hearted, their poems are a raw, complex and compelling diary of postmodern life and invite readers into astonishing new considerations of familiar settings, from the beginnings and ends of love and the imperatives of sexual desire, to the daily wonder of a poet's life in New York City and beyond - into lush-and sometimes horrible-dream worlds, imbuing the landscapes of their writing with the vividness and energy of fantasy.
I Must Be Living Twice brings together selections from the poet's previous work with a set of bold new poems that reflect Myles's sardonic, unapologetic, and freewheeling literary voice. Steeped in the culture of New York City, I Must Be Living Twice is a prism refracting a radical world and a compelling life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Spanning 10 books and four decades, this selected volume solidifies Myles's reputation as both an underground star and a major force in contemporary poetry. Myles (Snowflake/Different Streets) often traffics in intimate and autobiographical details, providing an opportunity for the personal to spread across questions of poetics, class, and urbanity, among others. Her early poems often lingered in the consciousness for decades, finding small but devoted audiences yet dismissed by the mainstream, not in small part because of their direct engagement with her life as a queer, working-class woman. Myles's poetic performance is complex, though it can appear deceptively simple. This is especially true of her many poems consisting of short lines that rush forward with beautifully casual, chatty language, and characteristic humor, insight, and surprise: "It is a miracle/ that I should speak/ to delight you./ I feel like a flag/ more or less/ but music is my breeze/ I have many friends/ rest assured." The pleasures of Myles's poetry multiply with each successive reading. This volume includes many out-of-print poems as well as new work and a brief 2014 essay by Myles on her poetics. Readers will be thrilled not only that this old work is available again, but that the new work is as impressive as ever.