For Now (Why I Write)

"[Myles] has a good time journeying through Hell, and like a hipVirgil, . . . is happy to show us the way."—NPRBlending humor and meditation, this wide-ranging essay by theaward-winning poet and writer Eileen Myles is a candid record ofthe multivalent forces that shaped them as a writer. It is also athoughtful investigation into the way that writing is inescapablyenmeshed with time.Myles recounts how potential eviction from their apartment;relationships with friends, lovers, and neighbors; and the texturesand identities of various cities, including New York and Marfa,Texas, all present a sense of writing as presence within time."Once I tasted time I never wanted anything else. . . . The onlyway I can prove it is that I started writing. Writing is my alibi,"they note. The author concludes that writing is a form of lovingthat makes living "more beautiful" because "I have time for it, Iam in it."