Just as there are few literary powers more enviable than the creation a of new poetic voice, there are few contemporary poets as recognizably assured in their voice as Eileen Myles. In her new poem, Western Poem, the speaker’s lines break and fall down the page as irrefutably as the clouds she projects, as they drift and stretch. But Myles is also a poet to internalize, the salty taste of eros and death never far from her mouth, as she inscribes and stresses the American scene, its cosmos of small objects, flat nouns, undeniable commonplace existences. In her slinky, “jagged singing” words and things never have to transcend nor universalize. Instead, her vision is hard, discrete, telegraphic and final. What a terrible relief for the things of a poet’s vision to just be themselves.
—Adam Fitzgerald, Poetry Editor
WESTERN POEM
purple clouds
my doubts
iridescent
cream, my
loss
purple mountains
my friends
buzzards circling
overhead
my hopes
birds singing
jagged singing
my indecision
wrecked skinny
tree
my past
photographs
I send home
my indiscretion
amber
street
light
my reading
my appetite
my appetite
red striped sky
my confusion
bright yellow
grey sky
my ardor
car lights
my commo
tion
telephone
pole
my wishes
stop sign
my fear
family dollar
family dollar
court house
my opinion
black cloud
white sky
hesitation
black cloud
white sky
bliss
blinking signals
my intentions
black mountains
too many
suggestions
skipping white
lines
my attention
a young cowboy
first saw
the lights
a young cowboy
first saw the
lights
the horns
on your van
my defensive
ness
that ole train
my dreams
that ole train
