Inferno: A Poet's Novel

By: Eileen Myles

Narrated by: Eileen Myles

Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

From its beginning - “My English professor’s ass was so beautiful” - to its end - “You can actually learn to have grace. And that’s heaven” - poet, essayist, and performer Eileen Myles’ chronicle transmits an energy and vividness that will not soon leave its listeners. Her story of a young female writer, discovering both her sexuality and her own creative drive in the meditative and raucous environment that was New York City in its punk and indie heyday, is engrossing, poignant, and funny. This is a voice from the underground that redefines the meaning of the word.

©2010 Eileen Myles (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Eileen Myles

It was a great experience living with Myles’ voice and story over the past week during all parts of my day. I will visit this audiobook again.

Awesome book

I love Eileen Myles & this book. Very fun to hear them read it! incredible.

i wish

struggled to finish. since this is autobiographical, there are points where you can't help but not like this person who is narrating past them's actions and words. there were parts that I liked; there was resonance and I appreciated that it felt raw in a sense, like fire. despite this, I can help but feel sad that I don't think I do like Eileen Myles as a person; as an ppet and writer, there is a unique perspective into the life of a poet, but this is like super literary life of a poet, someone who has been in the poet community since the 1970s, in New York. so I was excited to read this, but from the start, they did not feel like the ideal choice... their voice turned me off, if the words sometimes didn't. it was like they didn't want to read it aloud, or was distracted emotionally, because they felt pretty distant describing some reaally vulnerable stuff. so I discovered that eileen myles is not my cup of tea; I really did struggle with this, but I was determined to keep trying. I will most likely just read them on page, than hear her perform.

So major.

I loved listening to this. Totally stellar. Eileen Myles' writing it totally genius on the page, but then with her voice it's Nexf Level. Recommended

Funny and sometimes poignant, but erratic

It's clear that Myles shouldn't read her own work. As a performer she may have been moving in the 70s and 80s when she was discovering herself in the poetry scene of beatnik New York. But that voice loses its resonance in the 21st century and her experimental wandering novel becomes only a loose collection of sentences, most seemingly having little or nothing to do with the others. At times funny and even sharply profound, her memoir novel is otherwise only confusing, grotesque, and weirdly detached. Which may have been the point. A reflection on life as she sees it. But her delivery of that viewpoint is lacking in skill and subtlety. And her delivery as a voice narrator is both jarring and frustrating as she has no skill or smoothness. The editing is rough if it exists at all so the whole track sounds disjointed as though she often lost her place and had to stop for breath or to interpret a badly written word. Ultimately not a good listening experience.