Robert Boswell – Manifesting Emotion (July 2021)

Contemporary poets and fiction writers exist in a world, Robert Boswell notes, wherein a hundred cable channels show actors crying—or speaking through tears or wiping away a single, fugitive teardrop—twenty-four hours a day. In literary work, it can be difficult to convey a character’s emotional state without resorting to generic, repetitive gestures. Boswell’s lecture proposes a new craft term for a longstanding and storied strategy.