Eileen Myles: An East Village Poet and Icon
Eileen Myles (they/them) is many things; An acclaimed poet and novelist. A dog lover. A lesbian and transgender icon. An East Village local. A political commentator. A photographer. A feminist. A neighborhood preservationist. Their multi-faceted contributions to the fabric of New York’s counterculture place them as one of the most influential poets of the city’s past half a century.
In honor of Eileen Myles’ more than half a century as a New Yorker, we look at their work and life, focusing on their many deep connections to our neighborhood.
Myles is best known for their work as a celebrated poet (An American Poem, Peanut Butter, Working Life), novelist (Chelsea Girls, Cool for You, Inferno: [a poet’s novel], Afterglow), and performer. Their accolades include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers grant, four Lambda Book Awards, the Shelley Prize from the Poetry Society of America, the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing, and a poetry award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. The hit show “Transparent” recently quoted their poetry and featured a character based on their likeness.
Myles’ work can be characterized as frank, conversational, and experimental, and their subject matter often explores queer identity, sexuality, and political issues. Their poems blur the lines between autobiography and fiction, drawing on personal experiences to address larger themes of love, grief, and the search for meaning. Novelist, poet, and critic Dennis Cooper describes Myles as “one of the savviest and most restless intellects in contemporary literature.” In the Boston Review, Kathleen Rooney compares Myles’s oeuvre to Willie Nelson’s in the way that “the poems enact a radical receptiveness to passing thoughts and experiences.”
Born on December 9, 1949, into a turbulent, working-class household in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Myles attended catholic school in nearby Arlington and completed their undergraduate degree in English at Umass Boston. Even their decades in New York can’t hide the Boston roots, revealed in charming pronunciations of cahh (car), jaws (jars), and lodge (large).
Four years after graduating from Umass, Myles hopped on an Amtrak to New York City to pursue poetry. Upon arriving, they fell in love with the vibrant and quirky community of artists that found a home downtown, “When I finally got here I was like, ‘Wait, you mean this city is actually real?’ Bob Dylan was here. Andy Warhol was here. Everyone who drove a cab was writing a novel. Every waitress was a dancer. It was astonishing to me that people in New York were actually who they said they were.”
Myles’ first poetry reading in the city occurred at CBGB in 1974, cementing their affinity with the punk/alternative/DIY culture that defined the East Village in the late 20th century. Myles quickly became a member of the poetry community at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery, home to The Poetry Project. Between the years 1975 and 1977, they attended almost every reading at the church and participated in workshops by Alice Notley, Ted Berrigan, Bill Zavatsky and Paul Violi. They became friends with greats like Alice Notley, Ted Berrigan, and Allen Ginsberg, smoking cigarettes in back rooms while they discussed their craft. Between the years of 1984 and 1986, Myles returned to the Poetry Project as executive director.
From 1977 to 1979 Myles published dodgems, a poetry magazine, and worked as an assistant to poet James Schuyler in 1979 while he was living in the Chelsea Hotel. To make rent during their early days in the city, Myles waited tables at the Tin Palace, a jazz and poetry club on the Bowery, and worked as a librarian, a bouncer, a bike messenger and a clerk at Bleecker Bob’s, the Greenwich Village record store. Driving around town in a pink truck while working for a radical lesbian newspaper distribution company, they also delivered stacks of gay male pornography magazines and music publications.
Myles describes their writing style as “vernacular first person.” Winding yet direct, intimate yet brazen, their words fall on the page with a rhythmic ebb and flow. Myles prefers that their writing be experienced through the spoken word, considering the act itself to be performative. As they say, “I thought, Let’s be honest: the writing is a performance. Why shouldn’t the reading be a performance? So I’m just allowing the body in.”
Myles’ fascination with performance has also been explored through multiple theatrical ventures. In the 80s and 90s, they worked on collaborative and individual theater projects. Joan of Arc, a spiritual entertainment, and Patriarchy (a play) were both performed at St. Mark’s Church. Leaving New York, a solo performance piece, and Feeling Blue Pts. 1, 2 & 3 and Modern Art, written and directed by Eileen Myles, were produced at PS 122. In 2004, Myles wrote the libretto for the opera Hell, composed by Michael Webster with productions in 2004 and 2006. In 2010, they created and directed for the Dia Center for the Arts a performance piece, The Collection of Silence, which involved dancers, poets, kids, visual artists, and Buddhists in a collective public act of silence at the Hispanic Society in New York.
In 1991, Myles launched a write-in campaign for president of the United States. This was a part of a larger political critique and act of feminist protest. Their candidacy envisioned the possibility of “a gay candidate, an artist candidate, a candidate making under $50,000 a year.”
These days, Myles splits their time between the art community in Marfa, Texas, and the rent-stabilized apartment in the East Village where they have lived since the 70s. A die-hard East Village local, Myles’ love for and dedication to the neighborhood is palpable in writing and action.
On Third Street, overlooking the New York City Marble Cemetery, Myles has spent countless hours in their studio apartment developing their work, “My bed is by the window, and the light is perfect. I have written so much poetry there over the years. With the trees and cemetery below, it has a 19th-century quality.”
The East Village that existed when Myles first arrived in the city is vastly different than the East Village that exists today. Myles has been around for the many transitions that the neighborhood has gone through over the past decades. Despite the steadfast dedication of organizations and advocates (including us at Village Preservation), commercial development and gentrification have shut down many beloved local businesses, and pushed out many of the artists and thinkers that first put the neighborhood on the map.
Myles discusses NYU’s contributions to the gentrification of the neighborhood in an essay for the book While We Were Sleeping: NYU and the Destruction of New York. About the university purchasing more and more property for dorms, Myles says, “Then by the 21st c. they [students] were living in our buildings. They were wandering (or running) through the halls of the building at night with their beers or also in their bathrobes between apartments with their cups of tea. They were incredibly loud. The way they talked. Like no one was living here.”
Myles has gotten involved in many local actions to protect the community and built environment of the East Village and Lower East Side, including opposing the city-planned destruction and redevelopment of East River Park in the early 2020s. While the redevelopment was critical to protecting the neighborhoods from flooding, the city’s plans overstepped community suggestions and are set to destroy the many cherry trees and a few historic buildings that have sat in the park for many years.
Despite the many economic, cultural, and preservation issues the East Village continues to face, Eileen Myles is still happy to call it their home. On any given day, they can be found strolling the neighborhood with their dog, stopping by Veselka for breakfast or El Diablito for a couple of shrimp tacos. For as much as they leave the city — for a few years to San Diego, and now for stints in Marfa Texas–Myles always returns. “New York is like a tether,” they say.