Apr
04
2023
Since the 1990s the term “pathetic” has been thrown around in the art world to refer to a tendency of male visual artists’ work that made use of diaristic writing, stuffed animals, and crafts in a way that put an unconventional spin on gender. Eileen Myles’s anthology Pathetic Literature (2022) highlights the ways in which the “pathetic” has migrated to poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and theatrical writing, becoming as blurry as the gender of the person who wrote it. In this talk, Myles will talk about this new way of talking about thinking and feeling, about power and literary form, and read from their own poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.