In Eileen Myles’s newest book of poetry, Evolution, we encounter an arrival, a voice always becoming, unpinnable and queer. Myles’s new poems are transformations, and perhaps a culmination of the poet’s previous inquiries into love, gender, poetry, America and its politics ... These poems do not decenter the body in exchange for engaging politics; instead they engage the body politic, which here is inescapably against the state ... Myles’s poems make us reconsider what is experience, and does it have an order or is it a simultaneity? We too often believe when we speak of the interior we speak of something singular and known; Myles upends these notions ... It’s no great wonder that Myles has reached what some might call fame now...
Rich in vernacular and innovative line breaks, these poems ask to be read out loud ... Myles crafts poems of personal nature in Evolution. In very short lines, they are also reflective, contemporary, political, erotic and even aphoristic ... Evolution is a triumphant collection that manifests these words from Myles's prose poem 'Notebook, 1981': 'I called it poetry, but it was flesh and time and bread and friends frightened and free enough to want to have another day that way.'
For a well-known poet nearing 70, fame is a not an unreasonable topic, and it's considered here from many angles. The style here mashes politics writ large (Comey, Trump, the Catholic Church, Palestinian sovereignty, civil/women's/gay rights) and things more intimate (beloved dogs, the last days of Myles's mother), with a restless Myles at the center of everything—incanting in a loud and clear voice ... Get in the car and go for a ride with Myles. You'll be entertained—never having to guess what the poet is thinking or where you're being taken.
