Barrett Watten
Encyclopedia
Barrett Watten is an American poet, editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

, and educator often associated with the Language poets
Language poets
The Language poets are an avant garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s...

.

Since 1994, Watten has taught modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 and cultural studies
Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...

 at Wayne State University
Wayne State University
Wayne State University is a public research university located in Detroit, Michigan, United States, in the city's Midtown Cultural Center Historic District. Founded in 1868, WSU consists of 13 schools and colleges offering more than 400 major subject areas to over 32,000 graduate and...

 in Detroit. Other areas of research include postmodern culture and American literature
American literature
American literature is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States. During its early history, America was a series of British...

; poetics
Poetics
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory...

; literary and cultural theory; visual studies; the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

; and digital literature
Digital poetry
Digital poetry is a form of electronic literature, displaying a wide range of approaches to poetry, with a prominent and crucial use of computers...

. He is married to the poet Carla Harryman
Carla Harryman
Carla Harryman is an American poet, essayist, and playwright often associated with the Language poets. She teaches Creative Writing at Eastern Michigan University and serves on the MFA faculty of the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College...

; their son, Asa, was born in 1984.

Overview

Born in Long Beach, California
Long Beach, California
Long Beach is a city situated in Los Angeles County in Southern California, on the Pacific coast of the United States. The city is the 36th-largest city in the nation and the seventh-largest in California. As of 2010, its population was 462,257...

, Watten graduated from highschool in Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...

, and attended MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 and then UC Berkeley, where he took an AB in Biochemistry
Biochemistry
Biochemistry, sometimes called biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes in living organisms, including, but not limited to, living matter. Biochemistry governs all living organisms and living processes...

 in 1969. It was there he met poets Robert Grenier
Robert Grenier (poet)
Robert Grenier is a contemporary American poet associated with the Language School. He was founding co-editor of the influential magazine This...

 and Ron Silliman
Ron Silliman
Ron Silliman is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wrote a single poem, The Alphabet...

 and studied with Josephine Miles
Josephine Miles
Josephine Miles was an American poet and literary critic; the first woman to be tenured in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She wrote over a dozen books of poetry and several works of criticism....

, who recommended him to the Iowa Writers' Workshop
Iowa Writers' Workshop
The Program in Creative Writing, more commonly known as the Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, is a highly regarded graduate-level creative writing program in the United States...

 where he received an MFA
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...

 in English (Program of Creative Writing) in 1972. While at Iowa, Watten self-published and printed his first collection Radio Day in Soma City (1971) in a letterpress volume, unpaginated (25pp. approx.) in an edition of 75 copies, and began co-editing This
This (magazine)
This is a poetry journal associated with what would later be called Language poetry because during the time span in which This was published, "many poets of the emerging Language school were represented in its pages"....

with Grenier
Robert Grenier
Robert L. Grenier is a longtime CIA officer who served as the CIA's top counter-terrorism official and was fired from that position by CIA director Porter Goss. Later, Grenier joined Kroll, Inc., as Managing Director...

.

Watten later returned to the Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...

 and began to form relations with some experimental writers who would become known as the Language School. This 'school' was not a group precisely, but a tendency in the work of many of its so-called practitioners (see article on Language poets
Language poets
The Language poets are an avant garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s...

). Thus, Barrett Watten is one of the founding poets and editors of the Language School of poetry and one of its central theorists, editing This and Poetics Journal (with Lyn Hejinian) two of the crucial vehicles and networks for the dissemination of Language Poetry.

Work

Watten edited This
This (magazine)
This is a poetry journal associated with what would later be called Language poetry because during the time span in which This was published, "many poets of the emerging Language school were represented in its pages"....

, one of the central little magazines of the Language movement, and co-edited Poetics Journal, one of its theoretical venues. In 1986, he returned to UC Berkeley, earning his PhD in English in 1996. His published work includes Bad History (1998) and Frame (1971–1990) which appeared in 1997. Frame brings together six previously published works of poetry from two decades: Opera—Works ; Decay ; 1–10 ; Plasma/Paralleles/"X" ; Complete Thought and Conduit – along with two previously uncollected texts – City Fields and Frame. Two of his books – Progress (1985) and Under Erasure (1991) – were republished with a new preface, as Progress | Under Erasure (2004).

Watten is co-author, with Michael Davidson
Michael Davidson (poet)
Michael Davidson is an American poet.-Overview:Davidson has written eight books of poetry as well as numerous historical, cultural and critical works...

, Lyn Hejinian
Lyn Hejinian
Lyn Hejinian is an American poet, essayist, translator and publisher. She is often associated with the Language poets and is well known for her landmark work My Life , as well as her book of essays, The Language of Inquiry .-Life:Hejinian was born in the San...

, and Ron Silliman
Ron Silliman
Ron Silliman is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wrote a single poem, The Alphabet...

, of Leningrad: American Writers in the Soviet Union (1991) . He has published two volumes of literary and cultural criticism, Total Syntax (1985) and The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics (2003) which was awarded the René Wellek Prize in 2004. Watten earned his Phd
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 at the University of California at Berkeley in 1995. His dissertation was entitled: Horizon Shift: Progress and Negativity in American Modernism.

In late 2006
2006 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* French public notary Patrick Huet unveils Pieces of Hope to the Echo of the World in Lyon...

 saw the publication of the first volume of The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography. (Detroit, MI: Mode A/This Press, 2006). This work is described as "an ongoing experiment in collective autobiography by ten writers identified with Language poetry in San Francisco. The project will consist of 10 volumes in all". In 2007, Martin Richet translated into French Plasma / Parallèles / «X», a volume that joins together three long poems which originally appeared in a chapbook by Tuumba Press in 1979.

External links

Watten sites, exhibits, homepages
  • Barrett Watten Homepage, Wayne State University
  • Barrett Watten.net launched January 2010, Watten provides "continuously updated new content and material", some material relocated from the Watten's homepage at Wayne State
  • The Grand Piano website devoted to the 10 volumes of "Collective Autobiography" by 10 of the so-called "West Coast" group of Language poets, including Watten, which began serial publication in November 2006.


Online work, poetry, essays
  • Question of Interpretation an interactive piece at mark(s), an online quarterly.
  • Total Syntax: The Work in the World an essay by Watten focusing on the work of Clark Coolidge
    Clark Coolidge
    Clark Coolidge is an American poet born in Providence, Rhode Island.Often associated with the Language School, his experience as a Jazz drummer and interest in a wide array of subjects--- including caves, geology, bebop, weather, Salvador Dalí, Jack Kerouac, and movies--- often finds...



Others on Watten
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