Eileen Myles on Reality, Borges and Performance In Place in Document Journal

Still from An American Poem, by Andrea Kirsch in collaboration with poet Eileen Myles. [Image Description: Myles is caught in mid-sentence she sits in a green room with artwork on the wall on the right. They have long brown hair and dark brown eyes.]

Dispatches from Eileen Myles, the greatest president we never had

Text by 
Tia Glista

In 1990, the poet and novelist Eileen Myles ran for President of the United States, putting forth their name as a write-in candidate and campaigning on college campuses and on MTV. Their candidacy envisioned the possibility of “a gay candidate, an artist candidate, a candidate making under $50,000 a year,” they told Jezebel in 2016. Progress could not wait—and so Myles pushed the needle forward themself. 

Myles has always been clearing a path, contending that an alternative to the status quo is both necessary and possible. Maggie Nelson once said that their work “is an object lesson in how literature, at its best, creates its own audience, rather than serving any existing god.” Myles forged their early work among the poets of the New York School, and as a disciple of Allen Ginsberg and the St. Mark’s Poetry Project in the East Village of the ’70s and ’80s. Since then, they have published some 25 books of poetry and prose, written art journalism, and earned a Guggenheim fellowship, four Lambda book awards, and the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Prize. They are perhaps best known for their novel Chelsea Girls and the incendiary “An American Poem.”

On June 30, Myles hosted an iteration of the Rubin Foundation’s Performance in Placeseries, giving a tour of their home in Marfa, Texas, where they keep an extensive contemporary art collection—including work by Xylor Jane, Zoe Leonard, Gail Thacker, Jack Pierson, and Charline von Heyl. Just prior, I spoke with Myles over Zoom, and I realized after our conversation that it is not so much optimism as it is fearlessness—and zero-tolerance for bullshit—that has made them a lighting rod for so many admiring readers. Their voice cuts through the noise with uncompromising frankness and mesmeric momentum, charting every moment whisking by, be it one of pain or pleasure. Their work emerges as a proxy for living—even at moments when life feels inhospitable.

You can read the full interview at Document here.