Barrett Watten

Barrett Watten (born October 3, 1948) is an American poet, editor, and educator often 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. Other areas of research include postmodern culture and American literature; poetics; literary and cultural theory; visual studies; the avant-garde; and digital literature.

Watten is married to the poet Carla Harryman; their son, Asa, was born in 1984.

Watten was born in Long Beach, California in 1948. After graduating from high school in Oakland, California, he studied at MIT and the University of California, Berkeley.^[1] He majored in Biochemistry, graduating with an AB in 1969.^[2] At Berkeley he met poets such as Robert Grenier and Ron Silliman and studied with Josephine Miles in the English department. He enrolled in the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.^[1] In 1971 he and Grenier began the poetry journal This,^[3] one of the central little magazines of the Language poetry movement, which he edited with Grenier for the first three years and then alone until 1982.^[4] He graduated with a master's in fine arts degree in 1972.^[2]

After graduation Watten returned to San Francisco. He continued to publish This as sole editor and became involved in the early stages of Language poetry that was developing there.^[5] In 1976 he and other poets founded the reading series at the Grand Piano coffeehouse in San Francisco that ran through 1980. From 2006 to 2010 ten members of the group published The Grand Piano, a "collective autobiography" of that period.^[6]

Watten continued to edit This until 1982 and began publishing books under the This Press imprint. The first title was The Maintains by Clark Coolidge (1973), followed by book-length works by Larry Eigner, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson, Carla Harryman, Bruce Andrews, Bob Perelman, Robert Grenier, Ted Greenwald, Alan Davies, and others. With Lyn Hejinian, he co-founded and -edited Poetics Journal, one of its theoretical venues of the movement, from 1982 to 1998.^[7]

In the 1980s Watten worked as an academic editor and then Associate Editor for the journal Representations at Berkeley. In 1989 he began graduate studies at Berkeley and received his PhD in English in 1995.^[2] He joined the English department at Wayne State University in 1994.^[1] In 1995 he was the subject of a special issue of the poetry magazine Aerial.^[8] The American Comparative Literature Association awarded him the 2004 René Wellek Prize for his book The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics.^[9]

From the 1970s and 1980s on, Language poetry was a source of sustained literary controversy. Watten was often at the center of it, beginning in 1978 with an encounter with New American poet Robert Duncan over the work of Louis Zukofsky. In the 1980s he was a central figure in what came to be known as “The Poetry Wars,” where debates over literary form and politics, language and lyric expression raged. After his move to academia, these debates continued in online venues and listservs. In 2000, he held a celebrated cafeteria debate with poet Amiri Baraka at the “Poets of the 1960s” conference at University of Maine.

At Wayne State University in 2019, a social media campaign by some students against Watten, alleging hostile interactions, was the subject of an article inThe Chronicle of Higher Education.^[10] Wayne State hired an independent investigator, which resulted in disciplinary sanctions in November 2019.^[11] Concurrently, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) wrote a legal opinion addressed to Wayne State, criticizing its handling of the speech issues involved. Watten's faculty union, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), filed a series of grievances citing a lack of required due process and requesting the restrictions be withdrawn. After their being modified in arbitration, Watten has returned to teaching a full schedule since 2023.^[12]

Watten's early creative work is collected in Frame (1971–1990), which appeared in 1997 and 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. 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. Chax Press will publish a selection of recent and “recovered” experimental writings titled Zone (1973–2024) in late 2024.

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). His Berkeley dissertation is titled Horizon Shift: Progress and Negativity in American Modernism (1995), which connects form and history in the experimental writing of two women authors, Gertrude Stein and Laura (Riding) Jackson.

With Carrie Noland, he co-edited Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Displacement (2009), as well as special issues for the journals Qui Parle (2001) and the Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures (2020). In 2013, an anthology of essays from Poetics Journal was published (A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982–1998), followed in 2015 by an e-book that republished the entire journal's content (Poetics Journal Digital Archive).

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).^[13] 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."^[14] The project takes its name from a coffeehouse at 1607 Haight Street referred to above. The collaborative writing project began online in 1998, using Web-based software and an email listserv.

Watten's work has been translated in numerous foreign languages, with two chapbooks in French and Italian. Plasma/Parallèles/“X,” trans. Martin Richet (2007), comprises three long poems that originally appeared in a chapbook by Tuumba Press in 1979.^[15] A chapbook consisting only of Plasma, trans. by Gherardo Bortolotti, came out in 2010. His poetry provides the text for two works of urban sculpture by Siah Armajani: Six Parts of The Letter T (2003), installed in the courtyard of the Department of History, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio; and Temple Chess and Poetry Garden (2006), at the Des Moines Public Library, Des Moines, Iowa. A bilingual edition of his work in English and Russian, titled Not This: Selected Writings/Не то: Избранные тексты, ed. Vladimir Feshchenko, is due to appear from Polyphem press in Moscow in 2024.

• Zone (1973–2021) (Tucson: Chax Press, forthcoming 2024)
• Not This: Selected Writings/Не то: Избранные тексты, ed. Vladimir Feshchenko, trans. Feshchenko, Ruslan Mironov, Ekaterina Zakharkhiv et al. (Moscow: Polyphem, in press 2024)
• The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography, San Francisco, 1975–1980, with Bob Perelman, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, and Ted Pearson, parts 1–9 (Detroit: Mode A, 2006–10)
• Progress/Under Erasure (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2004)
• Bad History (Berkeley, Calif.: Atelos Press, 1998; 2nd printing 2002)
• Frame: 1971–1990 (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1997)
• Under Erasure (Tenerife, Canary Is., Spain: Zasterle Press, 1991)
• Leningrad: American Writers in the Soviet Union. With Ron Silliman, Lyn Hejinian, and Michael Davidson (San Francisco: Mercury House, 1991)
• Conduit (San Francisco: Gaz, 1988)
• Progress (New York: Roof Books, 1985)
• Complete Thought (Berkeley, Calif.: Tuumba, 1982)
• 1–10 (San Francisco: This Press, 1980)
• Plasma/Paralleles/”X” (Berkeley, Calif.: Tuumba, 1979)
• Decay (San Francisco: This Press, 1977)
• Opera—Works (Bolinas, Calif.: Big Sky Books, 1975)

• Poetics Journal 1–10, with Lyn Hejinian (1981–98)
• This 1–12 (1971–82; with Robert Grenier, 1971–73)

• Questions of Poetics: Language Writing and Consequences (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2016)
• The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2003)
• Total Syntax (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985)

• Poetics Journal Digital Archive, digital archive of Poetics Journal (1982-98), co-edited with Lyn Hejinian (Wesleyan University Press, 2015)
• A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982–98, ed. with Lyn Hejinian (Wesleyan University Press, 2013)
• Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Displacement, ed. with Carrie Noland (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
• The Poetics of New Meaning, with introduction, Qui Parle (University of California, Berkeley) 12, no.2 (Spring/Summer 2001; appeared Fall 2001)

• “Global Parataxis: From documenta to The Beirut-Hell Remix,” in Globalizing the Avant-Garde, European Avant-Garde and Modernist Studies, ed. David Ayers and Sascha Bru, vol. 8 (Berlin: De Gruyter, in press 2024)
• “The Dark Night of the Universal: transition (1927–38) as Region of the Modern,” in Anabela Duarte, ed., Music, Avant-Gardes, and Counterculture: Invisible Cities (London: Palgrave, in press 2024)
• “Jackson Mac Low as Reading Machine: Bob Brown, Stanzas for Iris Lezak, Sampling, and Data Culture,” in Jackson Mac Low: Between Writing and Performance, ed. Tyrus Miller and Carrie Noland (Philadelphia: Slought Foundation Press, 2023)
• “Holism, Antagonism, Proto-Poetics, and Pedagogy Among the Beats,” in The Beats and the Academy: A Renegotiation, ed. Erik Mortenson and Tony Trigilio (Clemson, S.C.: Clemson University Press,, 2023)
• “Poetry as a Scene of Decision: Larry Eigner as Distributed Author,” in George Hart and Jennifer Bartlett, eds., Momentous Inconclusions: The Life and Work of Larry Eigner (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2021)

• “Scaffolding Repetition: Gertrude Stein, Language Writing, Electronic Dance Music,” in special issue on “Poéticas e Políticas da Repetição” (Poets and Politics of Repetition), ed. Bruno Ministro, eLyra 22 (Porto, Port.; December): 29–55; online: https://bit.ly/3THq8lG
• “Liberation and the Historical Present: Gertrude Stein @ Zero Hour,” in “Feeling in Time: Radio Free Stein,” special section ed. Adam Frank, Textual Practice 36, no. 1 (December 2022): 2038–59; print and online: https://bit.ly/3CcnR8q
• "Практическая утопия языкового письма: Oт книги Ленинград до Движения Оккупай" (Language Writing’s Concrete Utopia: From ‘Leningrad’ to Occupy), trans. Vladimir Feshchenko, Новое литературное обозрение (New Literary Review, Moscow) 168 (February): 200–217
• “Modernity @ Zero Hour: Three Women (Lee Miller, Hannah Höch, Anonyma),” in special forum, “Modernity @ Zero Hour: The Question of the Universal and the Origins of the Global Order,” Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures 4, no. 1 (June 2020)
• “Ashbery Alpha and Omega: Presentism, Historicism, and Vice Versa,” Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures (Changsha, China) 2, no. 2 (December 2019)

Chapters and articles

• Hejinian, Lyn. “The Sad Note in the Poetics of Consciousness.” Allegorical Moments: Call to the Everyday. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan UP, 2023.
• Sokolova, Olga V., and Ekaterina Zakharkiv. “Лингвопрагматические сдвиги в новейшей поэзии: Российско-американские параллели” (Linguopragmatic Shifts in Recent Poetry: Russian-American Parallels). Литература двух Америк (Literature of the Americas) no. 12 (2022).
• Kreiner, Timothy. “The Politics of Language Writing and the Subject of History.” In Annie McClanahan, ed., special issue on “Deindustrialization and the New Cultures of Work.” Post45 no. 1 (1 January 2019). Link here.
• Brito, Mañuel. “Nonnarrative and History in Barrett Watten’s Under Erasure.” Atlantis: Revista de la asociatión española de estudios anglo-norteamericanos 40, no. 1 (June) 2018.
• Wedell, Noura. “Progress Toward New Sentimental Educations: How Contextual and Constructivist Poetics Reframe Issues of Distribution.” Special issue, “Poètes et éditeurs: diffuser la poésie d’avant-gare américaine.” IdeAs/Idées d’Amérique 9 (Spring2017). Link here.
• Fischer, Norman. “Total Absence and Total Presence in the Work of Barrett Watten.” Experience: Thinking, Writing, Language, & Religion. Tuscaloosa: U Alabama P, 2015.
• Chaitas, Lilian. “The Duncan/Watten Debat/cl/e” and “Stalin as Linguist.” Being Different: Strategies of Distinction and Twentieth-Century American Poetic Avant-Gardes. Leiden, Neth.: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2017.
• Brito, Mañuel. “Formas y estructuras poéticas en Barrett Watten” (Poetic forms and structures in Barrett Watten). Los mejores poetas americanos contemporáneos: Charles Bernstein, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten. Ed. Brito. Madrid: Ediciones literarias mandala, 2011.
• Aji, Hélène. “Barrett Watten: Poetry and Historiography.” Poetry and Public Language, ed. Tony Lopez and Anthony Caleshu. Exeter, U.K.: Shearsman Books, 2007.
• Arnold, David. “‘Just Rehashed Surrealism?”: The Writing of Barrett Watten.” Poetry and Language Writing: Objective and Surreal. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2007.
• Blazer, Alex. “Barrett Watten: From the Other Side of the Machine.” I Am Otherwise: The Romance Between Poetry and Theory After the Death of the Subject. Normal, Ill.: Dalkey Archive Press, 2007.
• Hugill, Piers. “Watten & Hejinian (‘What, no, begin again?): or Poetry as Language’s ‘State of Emergency.’” Poetry and Public Language, ed. Tony Lopez and Anthony Caleshu. Exeter, U.K.: Shearsman Books, 2007.
• Metres, Philip. “Barrett Watten’s Bad History.” Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront since 1941. Iowa City: U Iowa P, 2007

Reviews

• Heuving, Jeanne. Review of Questions of Poetics: Language Writing and Consequences. American Literature 91, no. 4 (December 2019): 905–7. PDF here.
• Williams, Tyrone. “Examples Of: On Barrett Watten’s Questions.” Review of Questions of Poetics. Jacket2 (18 January 2019). Link here.
• Harley, Luke. “Searchlight Intelligence.: Barrett Watten’s Critical Poetics.” Review of Questions of Poetics. Journal of Poetics Research no. 9 (31 August 2018).
• Grant Matthew Jenkins. Review of Questions of Poetics. ALH Online Review, ser. 14:1 (2017). Link here.
• Segal, Eyal. Review of A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982–1998. Poetics Today 38, no. 4 (2017).
• Barry Schwabsky. “Reader’s Diary: Barrett Watten’s Questions of Poetics.” Hyperallergic (6 November 2016). Link here.
• Almon, B. Review of Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Displacement. Choice 47, no. 10 (June 2010).

Literary biography

• Debrot, Jacques. “Barrett Watten.” Dictionary of Literary Biography 193. American Poets Since World War II, 6th Ser. Ed. Joseph M. Conte et al. Farmington, Mich.: Gale Research, 1998.

Edited volume

• Barrett Watten: Contemporary Poetics as Critical Theory. Special issue ed., with introduction, by Rod Smith. Aerial 8 (1995)

• Faculty webpage
• Barrett Watten.net
• The Grand Piano