Tom Stoppard's Arcadia

Dave and I went to NYC Tuesday to see Tom Stoppard's Arcadia at the Barrymore theater. It was phenomenal, but I can see how it would appeal to certain type of theater crowd. The entire first half I felt like my mind was crowded with so many ideas from algorithms to theories of heat to sexual escapades and poetry that I wasn't sure what to think. Stoppard somehow cleverly weaves all of his disparate threads together, and he is not only witty but extremely charming in his ultimate plan. His characters are romantics even as they throw around their banter and their academic theorems. In the end, they are vulnerable to the whimsy of their hearts, and I think that is what makes his play so interesting. He can be completely cerebral without losing that human vulnerability. It was a wonderful experience; I got goosebumps listening to the characters talk about the "march of life" in which we don't get to reach the end, but the march continues without us so that nothing is lost. Someone will pick up what we leave behind in much the same way that we pick up what is left to us. And the talk on the triviality of the experiment or the writing or any project in relation to the passion to do it while we are here and alive. Stoppard is truly a poet in his ability to capture that struggle to create, that urgent draw to engage in creating art (for what purpose?); he so wonderfully elucidates what is important.

Eileen Myles comes to New Orleans

Eileen Myles will be reading at the 17 Poets! Literary and Performance Series this Thursday, April 28th, 7:30 PM. www.17poets.com

She will be giving a book chat for a small audience above the Gold Mine Saloon on Thursday, April 28 from 6-7. Cost is 20.00 (15.00/ students) and includes a copy of her new book, Inferno (a poet's novel). Space is limited. RSVP to meganaburns@aol.com

More on Eileen's Work:

Eileen Myles was born in Boston and moved to New York in 1974. Her Inferno (a poet's novel) is just out from OR books. For her collection of essays, The Importance of Being Iceland, she received a Warhol/Creative Capital grant. Sorry Tree is her most recent book of poems. In 2010 the Poetry Society of America awarded Eileen the Shelley Prize. She is a Prof. Emeritus of Writing at UC San Diego. She lives in New York.

Inferno (a poet's novel)

Publication November 30th, 2010; 256 pages.

Online purchases from O/R Books only. Also available at fine bookstores.
O/R Website: http://www.eileenmyles.com/inferno.php

Praise for Eileen Myles’ Inferno:

"I was completely stupefied by Inferno in the best of ways. In fact, I think I must feel kind of like Dante felt after seeing the face of God. My descriptive capacity just fails, gives way completely. But I can tell you that Eileen Myles made me understand something I didn’t before. And really, what more can you ask of a novel, or a poet’s novel, or a poem, or a memoir, or whatever the hell this shimmering document is? Just read it." — Alison Bechdel

“What is a poem worth? Not much in America. What is a life worth? Inferno isn’t another ‘life of the poet,’ it’s a fugue state where life and poem are one: shameful and glorious. People sometimes say, ‘I came from nothing,’ but that’s not quite right. Myles shows us a ‘place’ a poet might come from, did come from––working class, Catholic, female, queer. This narrative journey somehow takes place in a moment, every moment, the impossible present moment of poetry.” – Rae Armantrout

“Zingingly funny and melancholy, Inferno follows a young girl from Boston in her descent into the maelstrom of New York Bohemia, circa 1968. Myles beautifully chronicles a lost Eden: ‘The place I found was carved out from sadness and sex and to write a poem there you merely needed to gather.’ ” — John Ashbery