Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Eileen Myles’ "Each Defeat" is a raw, electric meditation on love, longing, and the inescapability of loss, delivered in their characteristic conversational, fragmented style. The poem moves through an address to an absent lover or muse, where desire and creativity intertwine in a restless, shifting energy. Myles plays with the tension between presence and absence, intimacy and independence, while infusing the poem with surreal and sharply observed moments from daily life.

The opening plea—"Please! Keep / reading me / Blake"—establishes a tone of direct urgency, blending humor with sincerity. The invocation of William Blake, a poet known for his mystical intensity and visionary quality, suggests a desire for inspiration, transformation, or even poetic immortality. The speaker aligns their creative power with their relationship to this other person: "because you’re going to make / me the greatest / poet of / all time." The hyperbolic assertion underscores how love, influence, and poetic ambition become indistinguishable.

The poem then moves into a series of domestic and sensual gestures: "Keep smoothing / the stones in the / driveway / let me fry an egg / on your ass / & I’ll pick up / the mail." The casual juxtaposition of the mundane (picking up the mail) with the surreal (frying an egg on your ass) captures Myles’ signature playfulness and physicality. The surrealism of the image suggests both tenderness and a kind of irreverence, as if love and daily life are simultaneously grand and ridiculous.

The theme of absence emerges with "I feel your / absence in / the morning / & imagine your / instant mouth." The enjambment emphasizes the loneliness, as if the speaker’s day begins with an awareness of what is missing. Yet, rather than sinking into melancholy, the poem leaps into movement: "let me move / in with you— / Travelling / wrapping your limbs / on my back / I grow man woman / Child / I see wild wild wild." The shifting pronouns and identities—“man woman / Child”—suggest transformation, as if love destabilizes and expands the self. The repetition of "wild" reinforces a restless energy, a desire for experience beyond definition.

Myles then shifts to an invocation of expansive time and unpredictability: "Keep letting the / day be massive / Unlicensed." The word "unlicensed" connotes freedom, a life lived without constraints or rules, but also perhaps recklessness, as if surrendering to experience without protection. The sudden turn—"Oh please have / my child"—interrupts the abstract with something deeply personal and vulnerable. The admission that follows—“I’m a little / controlling”—undercuts the plea with self-awareness, suggesting a tension between independence and the longing for deep connection.

The poem continues its fluid movement between confession and observation, slipping between registers of intimacy and the outside world. The imagery turns surreal and slightly absurd: "Morgan / had a / whore in / her lap. You / Big fisherman / I love my / Friends." The inclusion of a named figure, Morgan, and the declarative, out-of-context statement “I love my / Friends” create a collage-like effect, as if the speaker’s mind is grasping at different moments to construct meaning.

The poem then shifts to a poignant reflection on loss and mortality. The speaker’s attention turns to an unnamed "creature with hair / long hair, it was hit by cars on the highway / Again and again." The detached description of the creature—perhaps a dog, “it must’ve been a dog”—gives the moment a haunting quality. The repetition of "again and again" emphasizes the inevitability and brutality of death. The uncertainty of “It could’ve been / Ours” personalizes the loss, linking it to a broader meditation on losing those we love.

The final lines deliver a quiet devastation: "Everyone loses their friends. / I couldn’t tell anyone about this sight." The understated declaration universalizes loss, yet the admission of silence—"I couldn’t tell anyone"—suggests a private grief, something unshareable, irreducible to words. The closing phrase, "Each defeat / Is sweet," lands ambiguously. It could be read as a resignation to loss, an acceptance of life’s inevitable wounds, or as a kind of defiant embrace of experience—where even pain has its own bittersweet beauty.

Myles’ "Each Defeat" operates in a space between personal confession and existential reckoning. The poem’s fluid structure mirrors the unpredictable nature of thought and emotion, moving seamlessly between desire, humor, intimacy, and grief. The language remains direct and unadorned, yet the images accumulate into something profound. Love and loss, presence and absence, control and surrender—all exist in tension, making "Each Defeat" a meditation on how we navigate relationships, memory, and the inescapable fact of mortality.

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