Barrett Watten

American poet

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Barrett Watten

Watten reading at the Prague Microfest in May 2011

Born| October 3, 1948

Long Beach, California

Occupation| Professor
Spouse| Carla Harryman
Academic background
Education| University of California, Berkeley
University of Iowa
Academic work
Institutions| Wayne State University

Barrett Watten (born October 3, 1948) is an American poet, editor, and educator associated with the Language poets. He is a professor of English at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, where he teaches modernism and cultural studies.

## Early life and education

[edit]

Watten was born in Long Beach, California, in 1948, the son of a US Navy physician.[1] As a child, he moved frequently, including time in Japan and Taiwan. He graduated high school in Oakland, California, in 1965, and briefly attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[1] He graduated with an AB in biochemistry from University of California, Berkeley in 1969.[2]

While at Berkeley, he met fellow poet Robert Grenier,[3] and participated in student protests against the Vietnam War.[1] He then attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, graduating in 1972 with an MFA.[2] Watten's association with Grenier continued when they began publishing This magazine.[4]

## Career

[edit]

In 1976, he and other poets founded the reading series at the Grand Piano coffeehouse in San Francisco that ran through 1980.[5][note 1] From 2006 to 2010 ten members of the group published The Grand Piano, a "collective autobiography" of that period.[5]

In 1971, Watten and Robert Grenier began the poetry journal This,[4] which he edited with Grenier for the first three years and then alone until 1982.[7][8] In 1989, he began graduate studies at Berkeley, receiving a PhD in English in 1995.[2] In 1995, the poetry magazine Aerial published a special issue about Watten.[9] Between 1981 and 1998, Watten served as an editor for Poetics Journal along with Lyn Hejinian.[10] In 2013, an anthology of essays from the journal was published, followed by an e-book of the entire journal's content in 2015.[10]

Watten joined the English department at Wayne State University in 1994.[3] In 2019, some students reported Watten to the university administration for misbehavior and later published their collective testimonials in a blog, including allegations of Watten being "hostile, verbally abusive, and manipulative with female students".[11] The university hired an independent investigator and removed him from teaching in November 2019.[11][12] Watten's faculty union, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), filed grievances citing a lack of required due process and a restraint of free speech, and requested the restrictions be withdrawn.[12] The details of the disciplinary action were published after a FOIA request, which was protested by Watten as "outrageous".[12] Watten returned to teaching classes in 2023.[7]

## Major work and publications

[edit]

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Watten's poetry is associated with a loosely-affiliated group of avant-garde poets referred to as the West Coast Language Poets.[1] This group includes Robert Grenier, Ron Silliman, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, Michael Palmer, Bob Perelman, Kit Robinson, and Leslie Scalapino.[1] The group shared an opposition to America's involvement in the Vietnam War, as well as "skepticism about the appropriation of truth by meaning".[1]

Since the early 1970s and up until today, the latter group of poets have been able to distinguish themselves from the preceding literary generations and movements, in particular the New American Poets, through an emphasis on self-reflexive experiences with language rather than the physical body.[1] Watten's early creative work is collected in Frame (1971–1990), which appeared in 1997.[note 2] Two book–length poems—Progress (1985) and Under Erasure (1991)—were republished with a new preface as Progress/Under Erasure (2004). Bad History, a book-length prose poem, appeared in 1998.

Watten is co-author, with Michael Davidson, Lyn Hejinian, and Ron Silliman, of Leningrad: American Writers in the Soviet Union (1991). He has published three volumes of literary and cultural criticism: Total Syntax (1985);The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics (2003); and Questions of Poetics: Language Writing and Consequences (2016).[13][14][15] Watten is also co-author, with Tom Mandel, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson, Carla Harryman, Rae Armantrout, Ted Pearson, Steve Benson, and Bob Perelman of The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography. (Detroit, MI: Mode A/This Press, 2006–2010).[16][note 3]

He also co-edited A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field (Wesleyan University Press, 2013) with Lyn Hejinian and Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Displacement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) with Carrie Noland.

## Awards and recognition

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The American Comparative Literature Association awarded him the 2004 René Wellek Prize for his book The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics.[17][18]

## Personal life

[edit]

Watten is married to poet (and collaborator) Carla Harryman.[19]

## Notes

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1. ^ “320 poets and performers were featured in the 153 events of the series.”[6]
2. ^ This volume brings together six previously published works of poetry from the previous two decades: Opera—Works (1975); Decay (1977); Plasma/Paralleles/"X" (1979); 1–10 (1980); Complete Thought (1982); and Conduit (1988)—along with two previously uncollected texts—City Fields and Frame.
3. ^ This work, which consists of ten volumes, is described as an "experiment in collective autobiography by ten writers identified with Language poetry in San Francisco".

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c d e f g Debrot, Jacques (1998). "Barrett Watten". In Conte, Joseph Mark (ed.). Dictionary of Literary Biography: American Poets Since World War II (Sixth Series). Gale. ISBN 0787618489.
2. ^ a b c "Barrett Watten - Professor". College of Liberal Arts & Sciences - Wayne State University. Archived from the original on 15 March 2016.
3. ^ a b "2003 Holloway Series - Barrett Watten". English Department, University of California, Berkeley. 2003. Archived from the original on 29 October 2003.
4. ^ a b Arnold, David (2007). "'Just Rehashed Surrealism'? The Writing of Barrett Watten". Poetry and Language Writing: Objective and Surreal. Liverpool University Press. p. 138\. ISBN 978-1-84631-115-4.
5. ^ a b Harley, Luke (7 February 2013). "Poetry as virtual community. A review of 'The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography'". Jacket2.
6. ^ "Chronology of The Grand Piano Reading Series". www.thegrandpiano.org.
7. ^ a b "Barrett Watten". College of Liberal Arts & Sciences - Wayne State University. Retrieved 21 September 2024.
8. ^ Hampson, Robert; Montgomery, Will (18 September 2012). "Innovations in Poetry". In Brooker, Peter; Gąsiorek, Andrzej; Longworth, Deborah; Thacker, Andrew (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Modernisms. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191743924. Retrieved 29 September 2024.
9. ^ Smith, Rod (1995). "Barrett Watten: Contemporary Poetics as Critical Theory". Aerial. No. 8\. ISBN 978-0-9619097-4-1. Archived from the original on 29 November 2020.
10. ^ a b "Poetics Journal Digital Archive". Wesleyan University Press. Retrieved 29 September 2024.
11. ^ a b Nguyen, Terry (21 June 2019). "'I Was Sick to My Stomach': A Scholar's Bullying Reputation Goes Under the Microscope". Chronicle of Higher Education. Vol. 65, no. 34\. pp. A26 – A27. Archived from the original on 2021-02-24. Retrieved 2024-09-28.
12. ^ a b c Zahneis, Meghan (11 December 2019). "This Professor Was Accused of Bullying Grad Students. Now He's Being Banned From Teaching". Chronicle of Higher Education. Archived from the original on 2021-04-17. Retrieved 2024-09-28.
13. ^ Schwabsky, Barry (6 November 2016). "Reader's Diary: Barrett Watten's Questions of Poetics". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 4 October 2024.
14. ^ Heuving, Jeanne (December 2019). "Book Review: Questions of Poetics: Language Writing and Consequences Intricate Thicket: Reading Late Modernist Poetries". American Literature. 91 (4): 905–907\. doi:10.1215/00029831-7917478. Retrieved 4 October 2024.
15. ^ Williams, Tyrone (18 January 2019). "Examples of On Barrett Watten's questions". Jacket2. Retrieved 4 October 2024.
16. ^ For additional details, commentary, and links see Barrett Watten's piece How The Grand Piano Is Being Written Archived June 30, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
17. ^ "The René Wellek Prize Citation 2004". American Comparative Literature Association. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
18. ^ "Comparative Literature Prizes for 2004". Comparative Literature. 58 (3). Duke University Press: xi–xiii. 2006. JSTOR 4125381.
19. ^ Simpson, Megan (1996). "An Interview with Carla Harryman". Contemporary Literature. 4 (37): 511–532\. doi:10.2307/1208770. JSTOR 1208770.

## External links

[edit]

* Faculty webpage
* Barrett Watten.net

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