Difference sounds different

Matt L. Rohrer interviews Eileen Myles about Inferno (A Poet's Novel) at We Who Are About To Die:

MLR: I feel like the book addresses the fact that your writing deals with the personal as political, while also being overtly political. You address “otherness” in terms of race, gender, sexuality, very openly and candidly, and even talk about sort of getting props for it (at a reading in Germany). Can you talk about your motivation behind the both of these types of political writing?

EM: I mean I can’t not write about these things. They’ve shaped my experience. Being a lesbian in the poetry scene or even just female, being white and from a certain class and NOT wanting or even being able to assimilate really shapes your experience and brings you into a certain relationship to the world. I’m amazed constantly by the things I hear and see and only feel grateful that I have a medium in which to express them. The political is vital all the time. It’s the edge that begs to be exposed and hang out there in the sun. And stuff that feels necessary to say, to write about always has enough energy to be sung, to have a rhythm somehow. Difference sounds different.