The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art (Semiotext(e) / Active Agents)

the headline says it all. Eileen's mind is a wonderful 8 of Wands flying in all directions and building these constellations. We are lucky to have them writing. This book is mainstay on my desk. A writer with a Sagittarius Mercury always delivers.

Eileen Myles' most discursive and eccentric collection of essays. Iceland is only a background tone throughout the book. Much more inside.

I love these essays.

Love reading this!

The Importance of Being Iceland got me thinking about the differences between the ways in which we string words together to make “art”, whatever that is. In some sense, this book seems to be doing (and I’m being careful to paraphrase what this book is “doing” with many many grains of salt) a thing that challenges me to consider what it is about combinations of words into “text” that makes it artful. For me, this was (as usual in the case of my auditory brain) rooted in the way this book makes sound in comparison to the way in which it makes some kind of conceivable meaning. I think one of the aspects of more conventional, non-prose poems (if you can call these “art essays” “prose poems”) is that the use of line and some kind of formal structure (or lack thereof) creates a sort of abstraction in comparison with a sentence. However, I don’t think that prevents groups of legitimate sentences from being classified as poems. However, back to sound, there is a deep linguistic connection in the post-infancy brain that makes us able to convert sounds to understandable ideas, and with prose, those sound-ideas are, perhaps, often more organized in a manner of linear understanding than non-prose poems. However, what I feel like is sometimes necessarily sacrificed for the sake of linear content comprehension is a sort of abstraction to the art of the phrase making, and I think it’s from that abstraction that I often feel the music of poetry, or the “artiness” of it, or something. I struggled with this book because it was an enjoyable read, even though I was constantly questioning what it was that I was reading. I don’t know why I feel such a compulsion to classify, but there was definitely an element of questioning what makes “essays” like this “art” that interfered with the sheer enjoyment of the quirky and absorbing writing in the book.

This has so far been my favorite book that we have read in this class. Eileen’s many poems on art in real life and the spirit of a woman who sometimes feels as though she could be (or should be) a man, sparked an interest inside of me somewhere next to my inner feminist.Initially more than a little unsure about what to expect out of the book, I was immediately taken by Myles’ punchy writing, laced with beautifully written insights about the world around her, around us. Her style lends itself, at many moments, to a stream-of-consciousness, conversational feel. One strong example of this is one page 137, at the end of “The Sonnets”, where Myles writes, “Ouch, who wrote that?!” Because of this, I felt a closer connection to her writing that only furthered my interest in the book.One of my favorite pieces in the book is titled “Sarah’s Smoke” (page 88). In this poem, Myles explores femininity and feminism, being alive and living, and the process of creating art. When she writes about the transition of Sarah’s work from angry and black to a white “[f]emale silence,” I found not only the imagery of this statement to be piercing, but also the meaning itself of such a transition was very poignant to me. It was interesting to imagine a world where we change from all color to absence of color, from screaming to whispering, but still have a profound impact all the same. This piece also talked about a period in Sarah’s life where she was nothing and then how she made a transition into something, as if she was butterfly sexually emerging from the chrysalis, with black wings and angry eyes. Her (lack of) smoke and her period of nothingness made me feel as though her living was dependent on her change. Though she was alive before, her lack of anger, of passion, of vice, led her to be less of a person. Is that what personhood is constituted by, Eileen?Beyond her skillful commentary on artists and writers throughout the book, Eileen Myles also skillfully comments on what it means to be a woman in the modern world. On page 44, she makes a statement about men compared to women, writing, “I think a man is safe … in the world and a woman never is.” The place of a woman in the world has historically been below that of men, but Eileen uses her writings to explore times when this balance was righted, even tipped in favor of women. At times, Myles also explore the idea of a masculine power being held captive inside women, as on page 63 when describing the art work of Nicole Eisenman. This same power, that, on page 107 Susanna Coffey says women “…have earned...”, finds itself a place in Myles’ own musings and makes them all the more powerful.

Eileen Myles' collected talks and articles are well worth having. She brings to prose writing the same irreverence, intelligence and heart as she does to poetry. It makes a great introduction to her work, but even seasoned readers of her poems will find something here to surprise and enlighten them. And if nothing else, you'll come to understand the vital importance of being Iceland.

Arrived in excellent condition.