Pathetic Literature with Eileen Myles

Join us to celebrate Pathetic Literature, an anthology collected and edited by Eileen Myles.

excerpt from the introduction to Pathetic Literature

In general poems are pathetic and diaries are pathetic. Really Literature is pathetic. Ask anyone who doesn’t care about literature. They would agree. If they bothered at all.

Perhaps the only accomplishment here is I’m saying that as an insider. This book is kind of a hollow. All these pieces of the rock (meaning Literature) long and short are just what I like. The invention of pathetic literature surely is Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book. More than a thousand years ago she kept her diaries, her interminable and adorable lists, her sovereignty to herself. Being discovered, she admits, kind of ruined things.

In light of our different pace I’d say we’re ready for ruin.

Eileen Myles (b. 1949, they/them) is a poet, novelist and art journalist whose practice of vernacular first-person writing has become a touchstone for the identity-fluid internet age. Pathetic Literature, which they edited is out in November from Grove Press. They live in New York and Marfa, TX. Their fiction includes Chelsea Girls (1994), Cool for You (2000), Inferno (a poet’s novel) (2010) and Afterglow (2017). Writing on art was gathered in the volume The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art (2009). Books of poetry include Evolution (2018) and I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems 1975-2014 and in Spring 2023 a “Working Life” will be released upon the world. They take pictures which they’ve shown at Bridget Donahue & in Provincetown at Schoolhouse Gallery. Their super-8 road film “The Trip” is on YouTube. They live in New York & in Marfa, TX.

Official Site