Evolution — Eileen Myles

The first all-new collection of poems since 2011's Snowflake/different streets―and following the critically acclaimed Afterglow (a dog memoir), as well as the volume of selected poems, I Must Be Living Twice―here, in Evolution, we find the eminent, exuberant writer at the forefront of American literature, upending genre in a new vernacular that enacts―like nobody else―the way we speak (inside and out) today. Evolution, with its channeling of Quakers, Fresca, and cell phones, radiates vital insight, purpose, and risk, like in these opening lines of the title poem:

Something
unearthly
about
today
so I buy
a Diet Coke &
a newspaper
a version of “me”
something
about me on the
earth & its sneakers
& feeling like
the earth's furniture
but that can't be
true or like
the coke & the Times
it's true for a little
while.