Eileen Myles's
The Importance of Being Iceland &mdash to be published by Semiotext(e)/MIT in fall of 2009 &mdash is an eclectic assemblage of writings, the title essay offering an account of trips to Reykjavik in 1996 and 2007 to explore Icelandic art, culture, politics, and poetry. The volume also includes a series of studies on female artists, including Sadie Benning, Nicole Eisenman, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, and Peggy Ahwesh, as well as a few men: Jack Pierson, Stephen Spielberg, James Schuyler, William Pope.L, and Robert Smithson.
Eileen Myles blogs weekly on art for
openfordesign.msn.com and is one of the best-known unofficial poets in America.
Sorry, Tree is the most recent of the more than twenty books she's published since the 1970s.
The Importance of Being Iceland will be the first full volume of her art writing. Myles was Artistic Director of the Poetry Project during the Reagan years, ran for President as an openly female write-in candidate in 1992, and has contributed essays, articles, and reviews to
Art in America,
Book Forum,
The Nation,
Cabinet,
The Stranger,
The Village Voice,
Index,
The Print Collector's Newsletter,
Provincetown Arts, and
Nest. She is currently a Professor of Writing at the University of California, San Diego.
