Cool for You by Eileen Myles

Cool for You by Eileen Myles

Grainy and stripped down, this gritty novel traces the downbeat progress of a tough, queer girl growing up in working-class Boston by "a cult figure to a generation of post-punk females forming their own literary avant-garde" (The New York Times).

Why can't I live right now. Because I am not rich, I am not a saint. But I do know this- not all of us were sent here to work.

The first published novel of legendary poet and performer Eileen Myles follows a queer female growing up in working-class Boston, straining against the institutions that hold her- family, Catholic school, jobs at a camp, at a nursing home, at a school for developmentally disabled adult males.

She wants to be an astronaut. Instead, she becomes a poet and journeys through a series of low-end schools, pathetic jobs, and unmade beds. Schooled by mean and memorable Catholic nuns, this tomboy heroine stumbles and dreams her way through the painful corridors of family, early sexual encounters, and an eye-opening series of jobs caring for the sick and insane--the abandoned wards of the state. This is a book hell-bent on telling the truth about poor women, and how they do (and do not) get out of the hands of their families and the state. Without artifice or pseudonym, protagonist Eileen Myles boldly sets down a rich and graphic account of female experience in this world.

Free-ranging and deadpan, tragic and joyful, this is a book about women, gender, class, bodies, escape, and what it means to be "inside." Never more relevant, and now with an introduction by Chris Kraus.

"Eileen Myles is a genius!"--Dorothy Allison

Eileen Myles was born in Cambridge, Mass. in 1949, was educated in catholic schools, graduated from U. Mass. (Boston) in 1971, and moved to New York City in 1974 to be a poet. She quickly became part of the reading, publishing, and performance scene in the East Village, editing dodgems in the late '70s and becoming part of the community of St. Mark's Poetry Project where she studied and was friends with Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Paul Violi, and Bill Zavatsky. In 1979, she was assistant to poet James Schuyler. She was Artistic Director of the Poetry Project, 1984-86. Myles is a vivid interpreter of her own work and travels widely in the US and Canada and internationally giving readings and performances. In 2007, she published Sorry, Tree (Wave Books), the latest of more than a dozen volumes of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction including Chelsea Girls, Not Me, Skies, The New Fuck You/adventures in lesbian reading, Cool for You, and The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art. Her most recent book is Inferno (A Poet's Novel) published by OR books. A new book of poems, Snowflake / different streets, will be published by Wave Books in 2011. She wrote the libretto for Hell, an opera with music composed by Michael Webster, which was performed on both coasts, 2004-2006. In 2007, she received The Warhol/Creative Capital art writers' grant. In 2010, the Poetry Society of America gave her the Shelley Memorial Award. She contributes to a wide number of publications including ArtForum, Bookforum, Parkett, and The Believer. She's a Prof. Emeritus at UC San Diego where she taught for five years. She lives in New York.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781619029170
ISBN 10	1619029170
Title	Cool for You
Author	Eileen Myles
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Counterpoint
Year published	2017-04-11
Number of pages	208
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.