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Barrett Watten

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Barrett Watten
Watten in May 2011
Born (1948-10-03) October 3, 1948 (age 77)
Long Beach, California
OccupationProfessor
SpouseCarla Harryman
Academic background
EducationUniversity of California, Berkeley
University of Iowa
Academic work
InstitutionsWayne State University

Barrett Watten (born October 3, 1948) is an American poet, critic, editor, and educator. He is associated with Language poetry, a movement that emerged on the West Coast of the United States in the 1970s. Watten is a professor of English at Wayne State University in Detroit, where he has taught since 1994. His academic work focuses on modernism, avant-garde poetics, and cultural studies.[1][2]

Early life and education

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Watten was born in Long Beach, California, to a United States Navy physician. During his childhood, his family moved frequently, including extended periods in Japan and Taiwan.[1] He graduated from Skyline High School in Oakland, California, in 1965 and briefly attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before transferring to the University of California, Berkeley, where he received an AB in biochemistry in 1969.[1]

While at Berkeley, Watten 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]

Career

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Watten is closely associated with the West Coast Language poets, a loosely affiliated group that included Robert Grenier, Ron Silliman, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, Michael Palmer, Bob Perelman, Kit Robinson, and Leslie Scalapino.[4] The group was associated with opposition to the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War and with a critical approach to conventional ideas of meaning and poetic expression.[5]

In 1971, Watten and Grenier founded the poetry journal This.[6] In 1976, Watten and other poets founded the reading series at the Grand Piano coffeehouse in San Francisco that ran through 1980.[7] From 2006 to 2010 ten members of the group published The Grand Piano, a "collective autobiography" of that period.[7][8]

Between 1981 and 1998, Watten co-edited Poetics Journal with Lyn Hejinian.[9] The journal published ten issues and became a forum for discussions of innovative poetry and poetics.[10][11]

Academic career

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Before joining Wayne State University, Watten held teaching positions at several universities, including San Francisco State University and the University of California, Berkeley. He was a lecturer at San Francisco State University from 1982 to 1985, a visiting lecturer at the University of California, San Diego, in 1993, and a teaching associate at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1993 to 1994.

Watten joined the Department of English at Wayne State University in 1994 as an assistant professor. He received tenure and was promoted to associate professor in 1999, and was promoted to professor in 2004. In fall 2005, he held a Fulbright Senior Fellowship at the University of Tübingen in Germany, where he was a visiting professor of American Studies. He was elected to the Wayne State Academy of Scholars in 2014.

In 2019, students brought allegations concerning Watten's conduct toward female graduate students to the attention of Wayne State University.[12] The allegations were subsequently reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education. The university retained an independent investigator and removed Watten from teaching in November 2019.[13] The university's faculty union, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), filed grievances concerning due process and free speech and requested that the restrictions on Watten be lifted.[12] Details concerning the disciplinary action subsequently became public following a Freedom of Information Act request, which Watten protested. He returned to teaching in 2023.[12][13]

Major works

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Watten's poetry includes Frame: 1971–1990 (1997), Progress/Under Erasure (2004), Bad History (1998), and Zone (Correlations, 1973–2021) (2025).[14] He co-authored Leningrad: American Writers in the Soviet Union (1991) and was one of ten co-authors of The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography (San Francisco, 1975–1989) (2006–2010).[15]

His criticism includes Total Syntax (1985), The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics (2003), and Questions of Poetics: Language Writing and Consequences (2016).[16][17]

Editorial work

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Watten edited This and co-edited Poetics Journal with Lyn Hejinian.[18] He later co-edited A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982–98 (2013), Poetics Journal Digital Archive (2015), and Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Dislocation (2009).[19]

Awards and recognition

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The American Comparative Literature Association awarded Watten the 2004 René Wellek Prize for his book The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics.[20][21]

Personal life

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Watten is married to poet (and collaborator) Carla Harryman.[22]

References

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  1. 1 2 3 4 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. 1 2 "Barrett Watten - Professor". College of Liberal Arts & Sciences - Wayne State University. Archived from the original on 15 March 2016.
  3. ↑ "2003 Holloway Series - Barrett Watten". English Department, University of California, Berkeley. 2003. Archived from the original on 29 October 2003.
  4. ↑ 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.
  5. ↑ Kreiner, Timothy (January 10, 2019). "The Politics of Language Writing and the Subject of History". Post45. Retrieved September 28, 2024.
  6. ↑ 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.
  7. 1 2 Harley, Luke (7 February 2013). "Poetry as virtual community. A review of 'The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography'". Jacket2.
  8. ↑ "Chronology of The Grand Piano Reading Series". The Grand Piano. Retrieved September 28, 2024.
  9. ↑ "Barrett Watten". College of Liberal Arts & Sciences - Wayne State University. Retrieved 21 September 2024.
  10. ↑ "Poetics Journal Digital Archive". Wesleyan University Press. Retrieved 29 September 2024.
  11. ↑ 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.{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: periodical has ISBN (link)
  12. 1 2 3 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.
  13. 1 2 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.
  14. ↑ Kreiner, Timothy; Kreiner, Timothy (2019-01-10). "The Politics of Language Writing and the Subject of History". Post45 Journal. ISSN 2168-8206.
  15. ↑ Schwabsky, Barry (6 November 2016). "Reader's Diary: Barrett Watten's Questions of Poetics". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 4 October 2024.
  16. ↑ 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.
  17. ↑ Williams, Tyrone (18 January 2019). "Examples of On Barrett Watten's questions". Jacket2. Retrieved 4 October 2024.
  18. ↑ "Allegorical Moments: Lyn Hejinian's Life in Writing". Los Angeles Review of Books. 2024-03-31. Retrieved 2026-04-10.
  19. ↑ "Post 34: Poetry and Public Language". www.english.wayne.edu. Archived from the original on 2007-06-30. Retrieved 2026-09-28.
  20. ↑ "The René Wellek Prize Citation 2004". American Comparative Literature Association. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
  21. ↑ "Comparative Literature Prizes for 2004". Comparative Literature. 58 (3). Duke University Press: xi–xiii. 2006. JSTOR 4125381.
  22. ↑ Simpson, Megan (1996). "An Interview with Carla Harryman". Contemporary Literature. 4 (37): 511–532. doi:10.2307/1208770. JSTOR 1208770.
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