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.'
Evolution returns to many of Myles’s previous themes, their ongoing exploration of gender, sexuality, queerness, urbanity, mortality, art, and radical politics, as well as an infinite fascination with animals and nature: birds, dogs, flowers. But there’s also something that has newly evolved — a crystallized declaration of intent ... there’s no mistaking Myles’s desire to take action and re-thinking what taking action can mean and how it can manifest collectively right now ... Unlike some of Myles’ earlier works, which straddle present and nostalgic modes,
Evolution is more focused on attending to what is immediate and urgent ... I’m moved by Evolution, by the grief it marks in cataloging our political and ecological crises, along with more personal losses ... I’m moved by the words of a poet who is willing to explore their own evolution...
