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