Eileen Myles, Skies (25)

In a departure from earlier work, Eileen Myles’ Skies is a book of pared-down, cloud-like poems, wisp-like on the page yet as intensely colored as a sunset. Although their work conjures the texture of wind and the broad spaces of the sky, these poems are not serenely pastoral. Rather, Myles’ sparse blank verse is concerned with the diaphanous qualities of perception, as if her momentary experiences were as slippery and translucent as clouds. A sometimes brutal loneliness and urgent but stoic sensuality results, finding its expression in simple colors: orange, grey, yellow, white, rose.