News that stays News | Susanne E. Hall

I can’t resist sharing Eileen Myles’s poem “December 9th.”  It’s a rumination on sharing a birthday with John Milton, and I happen to share that birthday with both Milton and Myles.  I’ve been lucky enough to see Myles read a couple of times in recent months, but I’ve never heard her read this older poem.  It begins:

I have the same

birthday as John

Milton.  Did

you know that?

So I don’t have to

write long poems about

heaven & hell–everything’s

been lost in my lifetime

& I’m usually blind drunk

and not so serious

either. However…

The poem goes on to make a plea to be comforted by others in one’s old age, a feeling that certainly sneaks in around the edges of each birthday celebration.

At this point in my life, however, being still relatively far from my dotage, I find the poem a tremendous relief.  By Myles’s logic, by virtue of my sharing a birthday with her, I can release myself from the imperative to be effortlessly charming and charismatic, and from writing simple yet fascinating essays and poems about my misadventures.  What a relief!

Happy Birthday Eileen!

[The rest of this poem can be found in Postmodern American Poetry. Ed. Paul Hoover, New York: Norton, 1994. 554.]

[Also, check out Myles's website at www.eileenmyles.com]