Eileen Myles on the Most Interesting Nights of Their Life
In Praise of the Wisdom of Translators, and Festival Neue Literatur
In this video in support of the Festival Neue Literatur, which celebrates contemporary German-language and American fiction (this year’s theme: Queer as Volk) and begins today in New York, Eileen Myles talks about the importance of translators and FNL. “The most interesting nights of my life have been when I’ve sat down with a table of translators, because they are the most sophisticated people I know,” Myles says, which is certainly saying something, coming from a poet this legendary. They also mention the political urgency of festivals like FNL, which are important in part because of the way they work “against the isolationism that is in the air in America right now.” Watch the video below, and be sure to check out some of the FNL events this week.
Bonus: Here’s another video of Myles reading the poem “Merk” from their 2015 collection I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems—which includes the genius image of “a dick that crawls up from the bottom of your ice cream cone” in order to “accidentally get eaten.” Watch below:
