The Brooklyn Rail

I pick up the plate, soap it, rinse it. I watch the shiny water drain into the sink, then gaze out the window to the Bay. The California sun says hello. My time spent washing dishes at this eastern facing window is often contemplative. Lately my thoughts have been circling around the book I just read: a “Working Life” by Eileen Myles. The phrase that keeps intruding into my reverie is sumptuous novel. This book is like that.

she kisses
my knee
it’s life
that is
my name
(“Tasha,” 26)

These poems probe consciousness from within the flow of experience. They move with the call and response between perception and thought. Perhaps yielding to their flow is what creates the feeling of sumptuousness.

Is a person something that occurs at the instant thought interacts with the world? Then consciousness would assemble itself over and over, somewhat miraculously. That seems to describe the special agency of these poems.

Eileen is motion

one thought
floated
to the next

swarms of it
(“My watch,” 164)

In any case this interpretation could account for my sense of participation in this work. Myles and reader co-occur over and over as the poems dash through the world—an experience of recognition and delight.

maybe
the words
are birds
(“May 8–9,” 174)

I also like the idea that the future is not something that exists independently of our minds. It’s created in language like everything else. It pops into existence, a sort of virtual particle, in the medium of language. Here is an example of perception, thought, then comes an imagined future:

…the streets
are wet
I hear and I
won’t
step into
them
(“March 3,” 53)

The poet brings a supple and curious mind to an engagement with mortality. They even prod it with a certain practical wit.

I imagine
bed every
day dying

a good
dying & I

push my
coffee
against it
hello
each day
(“April 15,” 63)

I’ve heard Buddhists say that Buddhas are everywhere, including in the hell realms. (Good to know what to look for.) The equanimity here has a similar remarkable quality.

I like
day &
I thank death
for my
past &
future
(“April 15,” 63)

Aversion to death is said to be the most fundamental. Lack of aversion is a characteristic of freedom, and a characteristic of freedom is ease. In many of these poems there is an ease to the way Myles lands the endings. For example, this last line sets up the poem to continue to expand and reverberate.

It’s
like my
body’s
pointing w
time full
of time.
That’s
what I meant
to say
to you
let’s have
some.
(“Page America Myles,” 8)

This poem is continuing, but not on the page. Somewhere else. The line is not an ending but a continuation. Again, this reminds me of what I’ve heard Buddhists say—one’s death day could be called a continuation day.

There is a generous swathe of love poems in this book. Perhaps that’s because awareness is digestive: grief softens into love which turns into decay and so on. Then one might think of love as the dip and sway of a killer’s tenderness. After all, the time granted to and occupied by lovers is seamlessly connected to grief, to endings and beginnings:

…Creatures
with new
& shaggy
bodies
in a hollow
of lowering
shade

Time had
us in
its nest.
(“Untitled,” 194)

The blaze of this love poem is pleasing:

my love
deep and translucent
troubled
the candle
love the candle
for its powerful
tongue
(“In You,” 19)

The poem “jihad” is particularly striking. It begins with a stuttering and associative attention. The impulse seems simply to record the lively impertinence (“Eva, After Getting Off the Boat,” 245). Then, after seven pages, with a shift in voice and focus, there is the sinuous leap of a narrative. Something wild has gathered itself to dart across the road at night. It’s a turn to mother memory.

to be
alone with
my mother

new
dark
superstar

when she’s

gone
and the
world’s

full
of holes
(“jihad,” 118)

Over the next six pages the grieving mind finds the location of the departed: everywhere, tucked inside the visible. And even, most mysteriously, inside oneself.

you become
in your

life her

recording
device

her ears

and nose
(“jihad,” 121)

The final line is a call so strong that it reminds me that the boundary that contains the dead also restrains the living:

she had
left

this
thing

that was
mine

a suit
of clothes

brain

only good

for recognizing

the unfathomable
sound

of the earth
being pounded

and producing
wind

or is it
my voice
(“jihad,” 122)

These are splendid poems.