Barrett Watten (ad6155)
University information
Contact information
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
460 W. Canfield, Detroit MI 48201
Barrett Watten is Professor of English at Wayne State University, an internationally recognized poet and award-winning critic. He is the author of The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics (Wesleyan UP; 2004 René Wellek Prize, ACLA) and Questions of Poetics: Language Writing and Consequences (U Iowa P, 2016), as well as numerous volumes of poetry, including Frame (1971-1990), Bad History, and Progress/Under Erasure. With Carrie Noland, he co-edited Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Displacement (Palgrave, 2008); and with Lyn Hejinian, he is coeditor of A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982-98 and Poetics Journal Digital Archive (Wesleyan UP, 2013/15). In 2022–23, he produced Grand Piano TV, a ten-part online reading series with the ten authors of The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography, San Francisco, 1975–1980 (available at bit.ly/3S7f7ae). In 2024–25, a bilingual selection will be published in English and Russian: Not This: Selected Writings/Не то: Избранные тексты; followed by a volume of recent and recovered work from Chax Press (Tucson, AZ): Zone (1973–2021).
He was awarded sabbatical leave for F24 and returns to teach in W25.
20th/21st century literature; modernist and avant-garde studies; postmodern and millennial literature and culture; poetry and poetics; visual culture; digital culture.
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1995
- Academy of Scholars, Wayne State University, 2014
- Millay Colony Residency (Austerlitz, N.Y.), August 2010
- Fulbright Senior Fellowship, Eberhard Karls Universität, Tübingen, Germany, Fall 2005
- The René Wellek Prize, American Comparative Literature Association, 2004
- Fellowship in Creative Writing, National Endowment for the Arts, 1979–80
Literary and cultural criticism
- 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)
Edited volumes
- 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)
Chapters (last six years)
- “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)
Articles (last six years)
- “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)
Creative works
- 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 print 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)
As editor
- Poetics Journal 1–10, with Lyn Hejinian (1981–98)
- This 1–12 (1971–82; with Robert Grenier, 1971–73)
Selected critical discussion
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).
Dissertation defenses (last six years)
- Felicia Preece, “Making Geography Come Alive”: Hemingway and Representing Space in Mid-Century America (PhD, 2023, director)
- Marcus Merritt, The Center of All Beauty: Radical Democracy, Materialism, and the Poetic Subject in 20th-Century American Poetry (PhD 2018, director)'
- Brad Flis, Border Ends: Anti-Imperialism, Settler Colonialism, and the Mexican Revolution in U.S. Modernism (PhD, 2018, director)
M.A. essay (last six years)
- Livingston Garland, “Archive Antidote: Digitality and the Archive in Jackson Mac Low’s The Light Poems” (MA, 2021, director)
Courses taught (last six years)
Graduate
- English 7004, Theoretical Issues in Cultural Studies, “Questions of Unreason in Modern Cultures,” Fall 2018
Upper division
- English 4991/5992, Honors/Senior Seminar, “Gertrude Stein and Modern Life,” Fall 2023
- English 5450, Modern American Literature, “Modernism, Modernity, and the Question of Value,” Winter 2019
- English 5860, Topics in Creative Writing, “Creative Foundations: Contemporary Forms and Critical Practice,” Fall 2018
Lower division
- English 3100, Introduction to Literary Studies, Winter 2019
- English 3090, Introduction to Cultural Studies, Fall 2023, Winter 2023
- English 2415, Geopolitics and Literature: “Genres of Global Noir: Poetry, Fiction, Cinema, Media,” Winter 2024
- English 2350, American Literature: “Modernism and Writing,” Winter 2024
Courses taught by Barrett Watten
Winter Term 2024
- ENG2350 - American Literature: Writing about Texts
- ENG2415 - Geopolitics and Literature: Writing about Texts