Small Press Holiday Recommendations: Day 20

I’m really surprised that only one person on my seasonal blog has recommended INFERNO: A POET’S NOVEL by Eileen Myles (OR Books), because it’s definitely been the most talked about and enthusiastically recommended book among my Facebook friends and acquaintances. Many of these recommendations have just been in the form of: Buy it. NOW. Others have been a bit longer winded, like, “Buy this book for every female artist you know.” Still others have paraphrased ideas from the book in their status line, like “Eileen Myles writes that she knew she was probably a lesbian, but wanted to become a poet first.” I really liked a concept that one writer paraphrased: “Eileen Myles’ Inferno reminds us that for a scene to be COOL, there must be mixing of the classes. There's a cash transaction to support the artists, but the artists come with gifts, fresh from the struggle to live.” (Since Myles often writes about her working class background but most artists I know do everything they can to wish away their dayjobs, I remembered this in my mind as “Artists need to learn how to earn a living, because part of their job is to depict the struggle to live.”)

One of my newest Facebook pals talked to Eileen Myles about writing and publishing the book, here: BombBlog podcast—Eileen Myles and Jackie Wang.

INFERNO is available mainly from the publisher, OR Books, or from select independent bookstores. I just bought my copy from my favorite New York bookstore and am anticipating its arrival on my doorstep. I can't wait.

http://www.orbooks.com/our-books/inferno-a-poets-novel/