Eileen Myles on How to Be Alone in New York, for New York Mag

At New York Magazine, Eileen Myles is one of the selected writers contributing to a feature called "How to Spend Time Alone" (specifically in New York City, naturally). Other points of view here include Jennifer ­Szalai, editor at The New York Times Book Review, Vivian Gornick, Darin Strauss, Joshua Cohen, James Hannaham, Jerry Saltz, and more. Myles's tip:

Riding the Staten Island Ferry Alone

I would say the Staten Island Ferry is my city’s greatest pleasure. We live a daily island life in Manhattan. But you actually have to get off the island to see it. I’ve ridden the ferry occasionally and inexorably since my 20s. When I was a kid and I couldn’t sleep, I’d walk to the bottom of the island, get on the ferry, smoke, look pensively at the water like Hart Crane, then just take the next ferry home. And always there’s the Statue in this intimate way. In this private, non-patriotic, cigarlike way. It’s just not a glamorous boat at all, so it’s how New York makes its connection with the rest of the world. The Circle Line goes around and around, but the people on the Staten Island Ferry are actually going to work. Which underlines my leisure. I don’t have to go to another city. I can waste my time on the water right here. Being on the water is an animal thing, and that a great city continues to have a common and available appendage to its waters means New York remains cool, grotty, and plebeian. Which is exactly this poet’s studio or anyone’s dream. The utter nonutility of a relationship to the ferry and these waters is what’s really, really good.

—Eileen Myles, author of I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems (September 2015)

We're really looking forward to that Selected Poems! In the meantime, read more at NY Mag.