For Now

In this third Why I Write volume, Eileen Myles addresses the social, political, and aesthetic conditions that shape their work.

"A sharply etched, unvarnished self-portrait." —Kirkus Reviews

“[Myles] has a good time journeying through Hell, and like a hip Virgil, . . . is happy to show us the way.” —NPR

"This is signature Myles: the unconventional syntax, the jazzy rhythms, the total commitment to writing in the heat of the moment, not edited or modulated by concessions to linear rationality." — Phil Gambone, Gay & Lesbian Review

In this raucous meditation, Eileen Myles offers an intimate glimpse into creativity’s immediacy. With erudition and wit, Myles recounts their early years as an awakening writer; existential struggles with landlords; storied moments with neighbours, friends, and lovers; and the textures and identities of cities and the country that reveal the nature of writing as presence in time.

For Myles, time’s “optic quality” is what enables writing in the first place—as attention, as devotion, as excess. It is this chronologised vision that enables the writer to love the world as it presently is, lending love a linguistic permanence amid social and political systems that threaten to eradicate it. Irreverent, generous, and always insightful, For Now is a candid record of the creative process from one of our most beloved artists.