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The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art
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The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art Paperback - 2009

by Eileen Myles

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From the publisher

A poet and post-punk heroine writes on subjects ranging from Bjrk to Robert Smithson, from traveling in Iceland to walking in Thoreau's footsteps on Cape Cod

Poet and post-punk heroine Eileen Myles has always operated in the art, writing, and queer performance scenes as a kind of observant flaneur. Like Baudelaire's gentleman stroller, Myles travels the city--wandering on garbage-strewn New York streets in the heat of summer, drifting though the antiseptic malls of La Jolla, and riding in the van with Sister Spit--seeing it with a poet's eye for detail and with the consciousness that writing about art and culture has always been a social gesture. Culled by the poet from twenty years of art writing, the essays in The Importance of Being Iceland make a lush document of her--and our--lives in these contemporary crowds. Framed by Myles's account of her travels in Iceland, these essays posit inbetweenness as the most vital position from which to perceive culture as a whole, and a fluidity in national identity as the best model for writing and thinking about art and culture. The essays include fresh takes on Thoreau's Cape Cod walk, working class speech, James Schulyer and Bjrk, queer Russia and Robert Smithson; how-tos on writing an avant-garde poem and driving a battered Japanese car that resembles a menopausal body; and opinions on such widely ranging subjects as filmmaker Sadie Benning, actor Daniel Day-Lewis, Ted Berrigan's Sonnets, and flossing.

Details

  • Title The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art
  • Author Eileen Myles
  • Binding Paperback
  • Pages 368
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Semiotext(e), Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
  • Publication date 2009-07-01
  • Illustrated Yes
  • Features Illustrated, Table of Contents
  • ISBN 9781584350668 / 1584350660
  • Weight 1.25 lbs (0.57 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.1 in (22.61 x 14.99 x 2.79 cm)
  • Age range 18 to UP years
  • Grade levels 13 - UP
  • Category Art & Art Instruction
  • Library of Congress subjects Essays
  • Dewey Decimal Code 812.54

Media reviews

Citations

  • Village Voice, 09/02/2009, Page 30

About the author

Eileen Myles, named by BUST magazine "the rock star of modern poetry," is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and prose, including Chelsea Girls, Cool for You, Sorry, Tree, and Not Me (Semiotext(e), 1991), and is the coeditor of The New Fuck You (Semiotext(e), 1995). Myles was head of the writing program at University of California, San Diego, from 2002 to 2007, and she has written extensively on art and writing and the cultural scene. Most recently, she received a fellowship from the Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Foundation.
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