“Tender, lyrical.” —Jarry Lee, Buzzfeed, one of 28 Exciting New Books You Need To Read

“Myles’s storytelling is as unconventional and allusive as ever, ranging from an imaginary talk show featuring Rosie as a guest to the more quotidian joys of loving an animal.” —Estelle Tang, Elle, one of the Best Books to Read This Fall

“[Afterglow aims] to catalog life in gritty, naturalistic stills that, when amassed over time, form a lyrical whole, like a good grunge song . . . Myles works to bridge the power discrepancies between owner and dog, author and subject.” —Maddie Crum, Los Angeles Review of Books

“The universal theme of attachment shines through in Eileen Myles’s unconventional Afterglow . . . With great candor, Myles uses the emotional intimacy of a human’s relationship with a dog to discuss larger questions of emotional intimacy . . . Afterglow illustrates the lasting bond between humans and dogs in a new way.” —Tobias Carroll, Portland Press Herald

“Wild and unruly . . . lively, conversational, and highly intelligent . . . [a] sincere elegiac reflection on a life shared with another being. Afterglow is a book about dogs, as well as the lessons of caretaking and intuition that they teach us, but it’s also a book about listening and observing, about how we communicate and how we relate.” —Caroline Tompkin, Vice

“[Afterglow] incomparably materializes the imagination one uses when relating to a pet.” —Rachel Davies, Nylon

“Extraordinary . . . moving without being maudlin . . . Afterglow brings language to the nonverbal intimacy of a human life lived with a dog.” —Nathan Goldman, Literary Hub

“Offbeat . . . whimsical but philosophical.” —Tom Beer, Newsday

“[A] mixture of celebration and elegy . . . Eileen makes words bite and lick at weirdly sensitive regions never previously detected.” —Charlie Fox, Spike

“Afterglow stretches the boundaries of memoir, blending fact and fable. Raucous and elegiac, hilarious and heartbreaking, the book explores not only Myles’ relationship with Rosie, but family and trauma; politics (including Myles’ 1991-2 presidential campaign); memory; and poetry.” —Alyssa Greene, Lambda Literary

“The best kind of memoir: it deals with serious subjects, but not without a great sense of humor.” —Lisa Howorth, Daily Mississippian

“Experimental and eccentric . . . [Myles makes] keen observations about love and loyalty, spirituality and the disparate but equally satisfying acts of taking a dog for a walk and writing a poem.” —Sharon Chisvin, Winnipeg Free Press

“Myles’s work is a perfect example of what happens when you mix raw language with emotion, pets with loss, and sexuality with socioculturalism. A captivating look at a poet’s repeated attempt ‘to dig a hole in eternity’ through language.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A rare new breed of dog memoir; think Patti Smith’s Just Kids, not Josh Grogan’s Marley and Me, absinthe not saccharine.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“Poetic, heartrending, soothing, and funny, this is a mind-expanding contemplation of creation, the act and the noun, and the creatures whose deaths we presume will precede ours but whose lives make our own better beyond reason. To this, readers should bring tissues, pencil and paper, even their dogs.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Myles uses a pastiche approach to explore the bodily, cerebral, and esoteric/religious aspects of the grieving process, all of which is portrayed with meditative poignancy . . . Myles depicts the raw pathos of loss with keen insight.” —Publishers Weekly

“Part eulogy, part homage, part love-letter, part madcap scrapbook . . . Love and loss are replayed and reimagined through the paranormal and surreal just as against the everyday and the earthly; the familial, communal, spiritual, sexual and bestial are all enlisted to spin the story of one special canine and her human. Only Eileen Myles could reinvent the memoir again so stunningly; Afterglow is the sort of multidimensional love story you could only expect from one of our greatest experimental writers living today!” —Porochista Khakpour, author of The Last Illusion and Sick: A Life of Lyme, Love, Illness, and Addiction

“Following Eileen Myles around a dog is like following Leopold Bloom around Dublin. Reading Afterglow is like entering the company of a sensibility that is rich, original, witty, and tonally brilliant. It is the darting asides, the phrasing and the subplots that matter most in this book, that give pure, sheer constant pleasure.” —Colm Tóibín, author of House of Names

“Everything Eileen Myles touches turns to poetry. Whether called a dog or a cat, it’s always poetry. Emily Dickinson famously decided that poetry was anything that made her ‘feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off.’ I can imagine Emily Dickinson writing an ecstatic blurb for Myles’s tender, trippy, deep, yet humanely silly new gift to the world: Afterglow. In this age of fake news and even fake poetry, trust this voice!” —Brad Gooch, author of Smash Cut and Rumi’s Secret

“What astounds me about Afterglow is the way in which Myles’s mourning of the dog Rosie’s death leads to surprising landscapes of thought in the language, where between sentences you’re walking out into vast open-air arenas and every time you do this some new light goes on in your brain. You think you’re reading about Eileen and a dog. You are reading about them, but with the complexities of their closeness always pointing farther up the field, asking why we’re here, what we’re going to do and with whom are we going to do it.” —Renee Gladman, author of Calamities

“Wildly inventive and just plain wild, feral, even, Eileen Myles’s dazzling Afterglow is about a dog, and her owner, and everything else in life, and also death, too.” —Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins and All Grown Up

Praise for Eileen Myles

“[The work] has a yearning quality and a sweetness that prevent it from being a mere time capsule or Henry Miller-like debauch . . . You find yourself caring about where this writer has come from, and where [they’re] going.” —Dwight Garner, New York Times

“Myles is often referred to as an ‘institution’—the way one speaks of a terrific restaurant that’s endured the waves of gentrification as a ‘New York institution.’ But the word bounces off . . . there is nothing official about [Myles], nothing staid or still.” —Ben Lerner, The Paris Review

“Part of Myles’s enduring appeal is that [the work is] experimental in the true sense
of the word; every time you turn around, [Myles is] up to something different.” —New York Magazine

“Myles forces a cultural and a literary reckoning . . . demanding understanding, the text held to the reader’s throat.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“Characteristically beguiling . . . [Myles] lulls the reader into a feeling of intimacy,
of being confided in . . . [and is] always artful.” —Bookforum

“[The] work is hard to describe, best encountered on its own terms; suffice to say it combines frankness and beauty in a truly original way.” —Guardian (UK)

Dear Eileen,

I take the liberty of calling you “Eileen” to begin the unpleasant duty of forcing you to legally take responsibility for the damages you have inflicted over a period of nine years upon the being you have taken to calling “Rosie.” I am Rosie’s lawyer. Dog lawyers have only become possible in recent years, even months. Which is not to say crimes of all kinds against dogs are “new” in any way. Crimes against dogs are ancient and widespread, but dogs having the wherewithal to attain legal representation is new indeed. My services have been retained thanks to a generous bequest by an anonymous donor who set up a foundation in her will for the explicit purpose of identifying dogs who were likely litigants, candidates for beginning the long and arduous process of getting the ball rolling on dogs’ rights. It’s been clear to my client during her life and most pressingly at the time of her death that the best way to make this need known would be to take up an individual dog’s case, not the case of “all dogs” which is too ubiquitous to pursue in the explicit way the law makes possible for human litigants, who are generally assumed to be individuals. A wealthy individual, of course, does not have more rights than a poor one. We are all brought up to honor “human rights,” but only wealthy humans are able to use the full force of the law; i.e., obtain high quality representation. By this logic, there can be no freedom for dogs unless there are wealthy dogs. There is one today, the dog formerly known as Rosie. She has been left a significant sum of money in my client’s will. She may spend it as she pleases with the single stipulation that she obtain counsel and press charges against her owner for a variety of abuses and crimes against dog kind. As you know, Eileen Myles, that owner is you.

It seemed unbelievable to me. Rosie was about ten. I looked at her licking an empty wrapper against the fence. She appeared entirely innocent of the letter’s content. What? Are we already going home she seemed to say. Okay. I don’t think she knows anything about this. I popped the leash back on and walked home planning my day. The loft we lived in was right across from Port Authority. Day and night I watched the lights of buses sail in and out of the building. I thought about the letter from time to time. I mean for years. I showed it to people. They laughed and smiled. Could Rosie and my entire relationship be framed as blame. I did force her to have sex with Buster that one time. No twice. Could I write a book about that. I’ve never been an “idea” writer. I have like a spurt then I go do something else. But this would be her book. A dog book is a great idea . . .