'Ruthlessly unguarded, surgically self-parodic and infinitely funny ... An indispensable book about friendship and intimacy; I alternately laughed and shivered as I turned the pages' Guardian

From the prolific poet, activist and writer Eileen Myles, a "Working Life" unerringly captures the measure of life. Exploring permanence and mortality, danger and safety, fear and wonder, these poems arise in the close quarters of air travel, the flashing of a landscape through a train window, in a truck tooling around town, or on foot with a dog during the pandemic lockdowns.

Their lines unabashedly sing the happy contradictions of love and sex, spill over with warnings about the not-so-future world threatened by climate change and capitalism, and find transcendent wonder in the landscapes and animals around us, and in the solitary and collective act of caring for one another and our world.

With intelligence, heart and singular vision, a "Working Life" shows Myles working at a thrilling new pitch of their poetic and philosophical powers.

Ruthlessly unguarded, surgically self-parodic and infinitely funny ... An indispensable book about friendship and intimacy; I alternately laughed and shivered as I turned the pages * Guardian *
Myles's poetry is kinetic, ecstatic, muscular, hilarious, sorrowful, valiant, original, necessary and timeless. -- Maggie Nelson
Eileen Myles's essential poetry is the hip kid leaning against their locker secretly burning with intensity, the smartest boy in the class who doesn't care he has a scar down his face, the thing you just wish you'd said. -- Lena Dunham
I loved Evolution . . . Poems that lope along, chatty, restless and limber -- Olivia Laing

Eileen Myles (they/them) came to New York from Boston in 1974 to be a poet. Their books include Pathetic Literature, For Now (an essay/talk about writing), Evolution, Afterglow (a dog memoir), I Must Be Living Twice: new and selected poems and Chelsea Girls. The Trip, their super-8 puppet road film can be seen on YouTube. Eileen has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and was recently elected a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters. They live in New York and Marfa, TX.