Pathetic Literature

An utterly unique collection composed by the award-winning poet and writer, a global anthology of pieces from lesser-known classics by luminaries like Franz Kafka, Samuel R. Delany, and Gwendolyn Brooks to up-and-coming writers that examine pathos and feeling, giving a well-timed rehab to the word “pathetic” “Literature is pathetic.” So claims Eileen Myles in their provocative and robust introduction to Pathetic Literature, a breathtaking mishmash of pieces ranging from poems to theater scripts to prose to anything in between, all exploring the so-called “pathetic” or awkwardly-felt moments and revelations around which lives are both built and undone. Myles first reclaimed the word for a seminar they taught at the University of California San Diego in the early 2000s, rescuing it from the derision into which it had slipped and restoring its original meaning of inspiring emotion or feeling, from the Ancient Greek rhetorical method pathos. Their identification of “pathetic” as ripe for reinvention forms the need for this anthology, which includes a hearty 106 contributors, encompassing canonical global stars like Robert Walser, Jorge Luis Borges, Rumi, and Gwendolyn Brooks, literary libertines like Dodie Bellamy, Samuel R. Delany, and Bob Flanagan, as well as extraordinary writers on the rise, including Nicole Wallace, Precious Okoyomon, and Will Farris. Wrenching and discomfiting prose by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Jack Halberstam, and Porochista Khakpour rubs shoulders with poems by Natalie Diaz, Victoria Chang, Lucille Clifton, and Ariana Reines, and butts up against fiction from Chester Himes, Djuna Barnes, Chris Kraus, and Qiu Miaojin, among so many others, including Myles’s own opening salvo of their 1992 presidential campaign. The result is a completely anomalous and uplifting anthology that encourages a fresh political discourse on literature, as well as supplying an essential compendium of pained, awkward, queer, trans, gleeful, and ever-jarring ways to think differently and live pathetically on a polarized and fearful planet.

EILEEN MYLES (they/them) came to New York from Boston in 1974 to be a poet. Their books include For Now (an essay/talk about writing), Afterglow (a dog memoir), I Must Be Living Twice: new and selected poems, and Chelsea Girls. The Trip, their super-8 puppet road film can be seen on YouTube. Eileen has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and was recently elected a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters. They live in New York and Marfa, TX.

Introduction by Eileen Myles “untitled” by Alice Notley “we’re the only colored people here” by Gwendolyn Brooks “People Without Names” by The Friend “Loveland” by Kevin Killian “Yesterday I Was” by Ama Birch “Afterword: The Great Punctuation Typography Struggle” by Andrea Dworkin “Truth or Consequences” by Ariana Reines Excerpt from The Pain Journal by Bob Flanagan “A Description of the Camp” by Baha’ Ebdeir “Would You Wear My Eyes?” by Bob Kaufman “August 6, 2011” by Brandon Shimoda Excerpt from The Romanian: Story of an Obsession by Bruce Benderson “My Faggot Kansas Blood Confessions to the Earth” and “My Faggot Blood on His Fist” by CAConrad “Reading My Catastrophe” by Camille Roy “Soap Bubbles in the Dirty Water” by Can Xue Excerpt from Texas: The Great Theft by Carmen Boullosa Excerpt from My Mother Laughs by Chantal Akerman “Before You Go” by Charles Bernstein Excerpt from If He Hollers, Let Him Go by Chester Himes Excerpt from I Love Dick by Chris Kraus Excerpt from “Some Other Deaths of Bas Jan Ader” by Dana Ward “Being Close to Data” by Dara Barrois/Dixon Excerpt from God Jr. by Dennis Cooper Excerpt from “Fat Chance” by Dodie Bellamy Excerpts from Nightwood by Djuna Barnes “Campaign Letter for President of the United States, 1991” by Eileen Myles “that flaming brand” and “Boulder/Meteor” by essa may ranapiri Excerpts from Sitt Marie Rose by Etel Adnan “A Child in Old Age” and “A Vision” by Fanny Howe “there is religious tattooing” by Fred Moten “Play It Again, S” by Gail Scott Excerpt from Letter to His Father by Franz Kafka Excerpt from Lenz by Georg Büchner Excerpt from My Dog Tulip by J. R. Ackerley “My Struggle” by Jack Halberstam “This Dark Apartment” by James Schuyler “Chronicle” by Frank B. Wilderson III Excerpt from Winter in the Blood by James Welch “28.” by Jerome Sala “An Obituary” by Joe Proulx “Stop” by Joan Larkin “The Merry Widow and The Rubber Husband (or How I Caught HIV: Version 4; Fall 1983)” by Joe Westmoreland “The Copyists” by Jocelyn Saidenberg “Catullus Tells Me Not to Write the Rant Against the Poem ‘Good Bones’ by Maggie Smith” by The Cyborg Jillian Weise Selections from The Hotel Wentley Poems by John Wieners “The Cult of the Phoenix” by Jorge Luis Borges “A Woman Is Talking to Death” by Judy Grahn “You Better Come” by Justin Torres “New Haven” by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio “SMALL/MEDIUM/LUST” by Andrea Abi-Karam Excerpt from Great Expectations by Kathy Acker “38” by Layli Long Soldier Excerpt from Light While There Is Light by Keith Waldrop “Shadow Janitor” by Kim Hyesoon Excerpt from Children in Reindeer Woods by Kristín Ómarsdóttir “In Case I Don’t Notice,” “God Gives You What You Can Handle,” and “The Only Good” by Laura Henriksen Excerpt from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne Excerpt from Wigger by Lawrence Braithwaite “Worms Make Heaven” by Laurie Weeks “the mother’s story” and “slave cabin, sotterly plantation, maryland, 1989” by Lucille Clifton Excerpt from No Lease on Life by Lynne Tillman Excerpt from All the Battles by Maan Abu Taleb Selections from Bluets by Maggie Nelson “East River Park Oak Tree” by Marcella Durand Excerpt from “Potatoes or Rice?” by Matthew Stadler “For the Death of 100 Whales,” “Flower Garland Froth,” and “Fleshy Nave” by Michael McClure “Polishness” by Michelle Tea “haiku,” “untitled 8,” “5 years old,” and “untitled 2” by Mira Gonzalez “Sum,” “People Like Monsters,” “How to,” and “Great” by Morgan Võ “Wedding Loop” by Moyra Davey “My Brother, My Wound” by Natalie Diaz Excerpts from Goner by Nate Lippens “it doesn’t matter how you fall into light, she said” and “think of the words as angels singing in your vagina, she said” by Akilah Oliver “Los Angeles” by Porochista Khakpour “NIIZH” by Nicole Wallace “Letter Three” by Qiu Miaojin “Intercepts” by Rae Armantrout “The Gift of Sight” by Rebecca Brown Selection from The Activist by Renee Gladman “April 4 Friday” by Rose “Rosebud” Feliu-Pettet “Kleist in Thun” by Robert Walser “Ed and the Movies” by Robert Glück “Four times over,” “I see you and I am getting closer,” and “Strain” by Sallie Fullerton “Yesterday I went to him full of dismay” by Rumi “Manual for General Housework” by Saidiya Hartman Excerpt from Molloy by Samuel Beckett Excerpt from Times Square Red, Times Square Blue by Samuel R. Delany Selections from The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon Excerpt from Notes Toward a Pamphlet by Sergio Chejfec “Letter I: Hesitations Concerning Baptism” by Simone Weil “Stingray” by Simone White “it’s dissociation season” by Precious Okoyomon “TOTAL LOL” by Sophie Robinson “The Slow Read Movement” and “Lincoln’s Lost Speech” by Sparrow “Inez, I Have to Gloat: You’re Gorgeous” and “Inez, When Someone Tells You You’re a Bitch” by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz “Where I Left Off” by Susie Timmons “Falling for You” by Tim Johnson and Mark So “Email to Mark Tim” by Eileen Myles Selection from Up Your Ass by Valerie Solanas “Goodbye Forever” by Steve Carey Excerpt from La Bâtarde by Violette Leduc Selection from The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Tom Cole “Time” by Victoria Chang “A Story that the United States is Made of” and “Pass” by Tongo Eisen-Martin Excerpts from The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo “MW Duet,” “Awake,” “Body,” and “Orlando” by Will Farris After Words by Eileen Myles