Snowflake

by Eileen Myles

In her first book of poetry since 2007, legendary poet, critic, and novelist Eileen Myles creates poet and poem anew as she pushes the boundaries of her craft ever closer to the enigmatic core. Snowflake finds the poet awash in an extended and distressed landscape mediated by technology and its distortion of time and space. In different streets, the poet returns home, to the familiar world of human connection. Two books meet as one: more Eileen Myles, more indelible connection, more fleeting ecstasy.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Nonfiction, Feminism

232 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 2012

About the author

Eileen Myles is a LAMBDA Literary Award-winning American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades.

Reviews

[Fiona Brownell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this out loud to some cats who tuned in and out. I like their style and it made me chuckle now and then

[Kelsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just so good. A book that really expands how I think about poetry. So good!

[Aidan Salier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Snowflake (new poems) was awesome. when i grow up i aspire to be Eileen Myles, if i don't get to be JD Salinger or Richard Brautigan. she writes a lot about the sun and being in the dark and being in crazy love with all sorts of females. it makes me feel ok about having females come and go in my life.

wasn't as into Different Streets (newer poems). i think these are mostly poems about/for her current girlfriend. maybe being too crazy in love with someone doesn't make for as good poems as losing that person you were crazy in love with.

[Aimée Verret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spent quite a while on this book. English is not my first language, so poetry can be a challenge. I read "Different Streets" first, didn't think much of it, but I read it again and then I started getting it. After I moved on to "Snowflake" and found it easier to get into (maybe I was now acclimated?). Anyhow, after two thorough reads I quite enjoyed the depth of these short snappy sentences, and the meaning behind what could pass for lightness. (Hope this review makes sense, I was struggling for the right words)

[Christa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Snowflake was a wonderful volume, full of thick words and more intangible topics. different streets was not as moving for me, I think in part because the topics were more straightforward and the approach verbally sparse.

At the end of different streets, Myles mentions that many of these 'newer poems' were transcriptions of older pieces, and that's somewhat how the poems feel to me-- quick, ephemeral, and fleeting, like they could vanish into air without leaving a trace of their weight.

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's like we took of our skin
and said it is hot. It's like we sold our skin
& said where did everyone go?

when the weather's too hot for comfort
&we we can't have ice-cream cones
it ain't no sin
to take off your skin
& dance around in your bones

from "Choke"

Can we have a moment for the Wave Books design? So beautiful - beige and black is the constraint, but no book from them looks the same. The design always enhances the gorgeous content.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this is a collection I need to give some time and a second read to really digest. I have a hard time with very tiny verses - I read through them too quickly and don't really savor the slowness of each page. I was left, overall, with a feeling that something important was going on, but I was missing out on it. I think I need to dedicate more patience to this and be a better reader when I have the energy to give it the attention it deserves.

[Hunter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't really like stream of consciousness styles and not too many of the poems really did anything for me. The super short linebreaks were also somewhat annoying. I didnt feel like any of the poems really said anything.
That said, it's pretty obvious that the styllistic choices were just not for me. If you like short lines and the stream of consciousness style you may like these. Hopefully you enjoy it more than I did.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice spare lines, down to the bone, honest. It's that so-called minimalist style of poetry influenced by haiku's compression--difficult to master, to sound natural and not solipsistic.

[W.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eileen Myles' later poems remind me of folk art. (I am smitten with folk art.) The carving might be rough, but the brutal desire to signal is strong as ever. Consistent throughout her career has been her wild careening, the desire of her poetry to destabilize you, your manners and your manneredness. Sometimes Myles drives the car into the ocean just to wake you up and remind you that you are drowning. (Because you are, you know....slowly). This book is a flip-book with Different Streets the other collection attached here, the two books hanging onto each other like...bats? I should quote from the book, because so much is quotable but I'm not near it now, so tra-la. The poems are often making fun of themselves, poking themselves, implying that the lines are verbigerating or overly aware of the sad notion that futility is the end point of everything floating in beauty. If you can't be you again tomorrow, you won't die, the poems seem to promise. You will just be otherness to the nth degree. These poems are very much evacuating poetry, but I'm not sure they're interested in parachutes. I think they would prefer to be sand in the roaring waves. What a pretty fate.

[Tyler Ookami]

This was packaged together with a collection called Different Streets so I will be reviewing both here. Eileen Myles really does feel like someone whose work I should really love: detached, cynical, anti-erotic, anti-sentimental, often sounding like overheard bits of conversation concerning people I will never meet. But their work usually leaves me cold, like I have very little takeaways other than "fine I suppose". I think Snowflake is the stronger collection here; having a central theme (American culture's dependence on oil and cars) helps a lot. More Oil, whose speaker confronts a dead rabbit in the road, is very moving and for sure the best Snowflake poem. As for Different Streets, nothing does much for me other than Hi, a poem about how the erotic properties of body odor erase not just gender but species, which I love very much because hahahahaha so true.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

"When the weather's too hot for comfort
& we can't have ice-cream cones
it ain't no sin
to take off your skin
& dance around in your bones"

***
Leave the cat
(in the bag;
(leave the bag
(where it is)))

(The snow’s too hot,
(and it’s too late
(to cry)))

[Kacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

“the perfect faceless fish

It’s a miracle
that I should speak
to delight you.”

[Pineapple · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eileen Myles. Punk poet. So good. Life feels better with Eileen Myles in it. And the book is beautiful too.

[Lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tbh these poems opened up my world

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

We don’t recognize clearly enough how lucky we are to have an Eileen Myles to rely upon.

[Arwen-Vira Marsh · Rating 1 out of 5]

did not understand one word

[Mic Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

A box with changing locks, inside something new with every opening — there is no other Eileen

[Conner]

Felt snowflake a lot more than different streets but loved the packaging of everything on this. Need to meditate more on the whole though, I’ll return to it again one day.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 M9972d 2012

[Marc Kohlman · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the funniest, sassiest and deep poetry collections I ever read! Each one of the poems eclipsing the last. I had the honor and pleasure of meeting Myles in September of 2014. That was an experience I shall always remember and cherish. She was the third long-standing published writer I ever met. Myles personal advice, opinions and perspectives on being a writer, marketing ones self and the art of poetry were interesting and of great influence. The day Myles came to read her poems at my college, I was planning on buying a copy of her book "Inferno" (however only one copy was available and already bought). Still, I purchased this book. Having read some of Myles poems prior to meeting her, i wanted to immerse myself more into her style of writing. The prose is succinct, direct and zippy with a lot of vivid imagery and witty sarcasm. This is a true page-turner! All of the poems were richly entertaining. A true feast for the mind and soul. Anyone who loves poetry should certainly read this warm, hilarious and embracing book.

[Jen B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate to give a bad rating to something that I know "isn't my thing," so I'll give this volume of poetry by Eileen Myles 3 stars.

I have a hard time wrapping my head around poetry, especially that which falls into the vein of being more symbolic, with less-than-concrete imagery. I'm sure some people will find inspiration and beauty in Myles' work; I struggled to find the cadence to read any of the works.

One poem is simply two words stacked on top of one another. (What?!)

I liked that the book was broken up into two groups of works - it gave me a very concrete place to start and stop, then catch my breath by reading something else, then come back, flip the book over and read toward the middle again. I didn't, however, find myself drawn to any particular poem (or piece of a poem) to make note of it, and that disappointed me.

[Carmen Rios · Rating 5 out of 5]

There comes a time in every girl’s life when she needs to learn something the hard way. She packs up her bag and she runs away, when she gets back, it happens: the thing that suddenly makes the loneliness a little less palpable and everything a little less grey. Something good comes. Or, in my case, two good things. It was a brown envelope from Wave Books and inside was Eileen Myles’ name – twice. There were two little books, stuck together forever in the poet’s new tandem book Snowflake / different streets. Two books wearing the same little white sweater. I breathed in. Eileen Myles still has it. Eileen Myles will always have it. It was February 2012 then. I felt more certain then than ever that I was going to be okay.

Entire review is at Autostraddle: https://www.autostraddle.com/eileen-m...

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Attracted by her biting wit and flowing line, I sought Myles out after hearing her on a Poetry Foundation podcast. After all, aren't we all on the lookout for what I took to be a working-class, lesbian version of Fred Seidel? Unfortunately, the only poem here that lived up to my expectations was on the "different streets" side of the house, called "the perfect faceless fish". The rest were stranded in traffic on a California freeway or faded away before the page was even turned.

[Resi · Rating 3 out of 5]

there were some pieces I liked in these books, although I found that her style took some getting used to. in a way, she almost kind of reminds me of gertrude stein in stanzas in meditation --- while she is far less dense than stein, myles's pieces, individually, take the reader on a sort of stream of consciousness trajectory. the result is pretty fascinating, and makes for an interesting read, nonetheless!

[Hillary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm lukewarm because it felt very hit or miss. I wonder if some of it was just too personal for me to connect with. I prefer Snowflake to Different Streets--the latter felt more specific to her life than the former, or at least I interpreted it that way.

[Mersini · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first of my encounters with Eileen Myles' poetry, ahead of seeing her talk in a few days. I liked Inferno, and I liked this one, and I suspect I'll like I Must Be Living Twice, which I'm about to start.

[J.A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

review forthcoming at The Nervous Breakdown

[lola · Rating 3 out of 5]

one day i'll like the things people write after they're happy and mature
and then this will be my favorite

[Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote a review of Snowflake / Different Streets over at Revising Loneliness:

http://revisingloneliness.com/2012/07...