Bread and Water offers a look at cult New York poet Eileen Myles’ trademark style in formation: encapsulating the drifts and drags of a young working-class artist seeking out love, community, adventure; finding the joys of expression, and therein, undoing. The poet, novelist and former presidential candidate Eileen Myles moved to New York in 1974 and quickly became involved in a vital circle of artists based around the St. Marks’ Poetry Project. Myles’ work is widely recognized as an exemplar of first-person writing, owing to their eye for the irreverent power of the slapdash and mundane, how a swab of peanut butter or coffee cup rings evoke keen truths of being and appetite. Myles is the author of queer canon texts Chelsea Girls (1994) and Cool for You (2000), and recently, the literary anthology, Pathetic Literature (2022).
