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grievances citing a lack of required due process and a restraint of free speech,and requested the restrictions be withdrawn.[12] The details of the disciplinary action were published after a FOIA request,which was protested by Watten as "outrageous".[12] Watten returned to teaching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]
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
The American Comparative Literature Association awarded him the 2004 RenéWellek Prize for his book The Constructivist Moment:From Material Text to Cultural Poetics.[17][18]
Personal life
Watten is married to poet (and collaborator) Carla Harryman.[19]
Notes
↑ “320 poets and performers were featured in the 153 events of the series.”[6]
↑ 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.
↑ 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
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Debrot, Jacques (1998). "Barrett Watten". In Conte, Joseph Mark (ed.). Dictionary of Literary Biography: American Poets Since World War II (Sixth Series). Gale. ISBN0787618489.
1 2 "Barrett Watten". College of Liberal Arts & Sciences - Wayne State University. Retrieved 21 September 2024.
↑ 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. ISBN9780191743924. Retrieved 29 September 2024.
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