Photo of Eileen Myles (left) by Kelly Writers House staff, March 2016.
A stingray doesn’t know the word for “pathetic.” A saintdoes not care if prayer renders her pathetic. Poets are pathetic because they devote themselves to form in the face of formlessness. (Are they? Do they?) These kinds of formulations and queries arise in reading Pathetic Literature , the momentous anthology edited by Eileen Myles and released by Grove Press in November 2022.
A stingray doesn’t know the word for “pathetic.” A saint does not care if prayer renders her pathetic. Poets are pathetic because they devote themselves to form in the face of formlessness. (Are they? Do they?) These kinds of formulations and queries arise in reading Pathetic Literature , the momentous anthology edited by Eileen Myles and released by Grove Press in November 2022.
Death's great black wing
'Mi say mi cyant believe it'
Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold,
Death’s great black wing scraped the air,
Misery gnaws to the bone.
Why then do we not despair?
— Anna Akhmatova