>> Events <<
May 21, 2016
The Louisville Conference
on Literature and Culture since 1900
University of Louisville
18–20 February 2016
(after On Kawara)
Alan Golding
Aaron Jaffe
Rodrigo Toscano
Lisa Gitelman
Mat Johnson
Johanna Drucker
Lauri Ramey
C.S. Giscombe
Aldon Nielsen
Tyrone Williams
… More
December 28, 2015
From Amiri Baraka, Home on the Range
Festival of Poets Theater
Sector 2337, Chicago
2–5 December 2015
(After On Kawara)
Heidi Bean
Patrick Durgin
Carla Harryman
Devin King
John Beer
Daniel Borzutzky
John Tipton
Jennifer Karmin
Jennifer Rupert
Chris Glomski
Peter O’Leary
Laura Goldstein
Dan Godston
Analeah Rosen … More
Barrett Watten, “The Poet/Critic:
Transvaluations of Value after Modernism”
MSA, 20 November 2015
I continue my discussion of the poetics of value in modernism (Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams) in taking up political economy and poetics as twin forms of historically specific making, twin discourses of the determination of value. For poetics as value making, let me advance that the thirty-six individual essays in our recent Guide to Poetics Journal, along with the editorial and publication work involved in soliciting, editing, rethinking, and repurposing their content, counts as such. Each essay in our Guide—for example, Ron Silliman on “the parsimony principle,” George Lakoff on avant-garde framing, Susan Howe on Emily Dickinson, Lyn Hejinian on “the rejection of closure,” in the volume’s first section—demonstrates how poetry is a value-making activity, in giving value to it. … More
Transvaluations of Value: Poetics and Political Economy
Session P28, 8:30–10:00 A.M., Friday, 20 November 2015
Modernist Studies Association
Herman Rapaport, “Transvaluations of Value: Fredric Jameson, Jackson Mac Low”
Barrett Watten, “The Poet/Critic: Transvaluations of Value After Modernism”
Tyrone Williams, “‘The Changing Same’: Value in Marx and Amiri Baraka”
This panel takes up debates between poetics and political economy after the recent turn to Marxist political economy as a materialist interpretive strategy for poetry and poetics. In a contrary move, a return to the aesthetic as a construction of value, sited in a more classical reading of modernist form by Charles Altieri, appropriates the concept of “value” for self-reflexive poetic forms. The three presenters will develop approaches to the concept of value that are irreducible either to economism, especially the commodity form, or to the aesthetic, e.g. modernism, and will seek to articulate more inclusive accounts of value that extend political economy to other value-producing registers in the horizons of art, history, ethics, and politics. [See next post.]
Modernist Studies Association
Boston, Massachusetts
19–22 November 2015
(after On Kawara)
Herman Rapaport
Tyrone Williams
Carla Billiterri
Ben Friedlander
Alisa Allkins
Alan Golding
Aaron Nyerges
Sarah Posman
Dorothy Wang
Rachel Galvin
Kaplan Harris
… More
December 24, 2015
Barrett Watten, “Occupy Poetics:
A Work in Progress”
ASAP, 28 September 2015
This paper follows on a contribution to the EAM meeting in Helsinki that tracked two opposing accounts of language-centered writing’s influence on experimental poets engaged in Occupy movements, specifically Oakland. Moving from a materialist account of utopian possibility realized in poetic form to a combinatorial freedom associated with chance-generated strategies, the essay sought a convergence between contingent decision, radical freedom, and experimental practices among Occupy poets, focusing on poets David Lau and Brian Ang. In extending my argument, I survey a greater range of poets in the movement, beginning with Sara Larsen and Jasper Bernes, to develop a set of terms that interpret Occupy itself as informed by poetic principles. I return to the proliferation of poetics in the various Occupy sites, both to confirm the importance of a poetics of “combinatorial materialism,” and to extend the analysis of my first two examples by alternative concerns more prominent or visible in other poets. … More
Association for the Study
of the Arts of the Present
Greenville, South Carolina
24–27 September 2015
(after On Kawara)
Jonathan Eburne
Nico Israel
Lytle Shaw
Sarah Brouillette
Mark Goble
Gloria Fisk
Brian McHale
Esther Gottlieb
Jennifer Ashton
Walter Benn Michaels
… More
September 22, 2015
The following is a collectively authored and lightly edited chronology of significant events and publications in poetry and poetics from 2010 to 2015. Submit 3–5 entries, including year and month, to barrett.watten@gmail.com for inclusion. The project is intended to sample an expansive account of poetic activity during this period, as an aid to memory, reflection, and action.
April Alice Notley, Reason and Other Women (Chax Press)
Rae Armantrout wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
June Rethinking Poetics conference, Columbia University; organized by Bob Perelman and Michael Golsten
July 95 Cent Skool: Summer Seminar in Social Poetics, Oakland; organized by Joshua Clover and Juliana Spahr
October Final volume of The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography (Mode A/This Press)
Gail Scott, The Obituary (Nightboat); a novel close to poetry and the impact of First Nations genocide on urban psycho-geography
November Ed Roberson, To See the Earth Before the End of the World (Wesleyan UP)
December Kit Robinson, Determination (Cuneiform Press)
August Durruti Free Skool, sequel to the 95 Cent Skool, Berkeley
ARMED CELL 1, ed. Brian Ang, distributed at Durruti Free Skool
September Start of Occupy movement, which would include significant participation and related publishing by poets
November Performances of The Grand Piano at University of California Berkeley and California College of Arts, San Francisco (dates t/k)
January Death of Stacy Doris (January 31)
February Franziska Ruprecht’s Dichtwerkvariété events combine performed writing with American variety show style in Munich, Germany
April Lyn Hejinian, The Book of a Thousand Eyes (Omnidawn)
May Death of Leslie Scalapino (May 28)
September Death of Arkadii Dragomoshchenko (September 12)
November Amiri Baraka at the African-American Museum, Detroit (November 16)
May East Bay Poetry Summit
September Carla Harryman, W/M (Split Level)
November Ronald Johnson, Ark (Flood Editions)
January Death of Amiri Baraka (January 19)
March Nathaniel Mackey, Outer Pradesh (Anomalous Press)
May The Water Street Journal; an act of sublime and politically radical piracy published on May Day without a barcode and distributed free in Ypsilanti, MI
December 10th anniversary of Dos Madres Press, Heterotopia Book Store, Cincinnati (date t/k)
January Franziska Ruprecht, Meer-Maid (Wolfbach Verlag)
February Tony Sanders (d. February 11) wins the Bernard F. Conners Prize
March Kenneth Goldsmith performs Michael Brown’s autopsy report at Brown University (date t/k)
June Cancellation of Berkeley Poetry Conference after complaints over inclusion of Vanessa Place; the conference is restructured and renamed Crosstalk, Color, Composition: A Berkeley Poetry Conference
August Death of Stephen Rodefer (August 22)
Hungarian PEN awards Charles Bernstein the Janus Pannonius Grand Prize for Poetry
September A poetry reading with three black men and one working-class man of unspecified ethnicity in an Ypsilanti house to celebrate one among them who has suffered from police harassment (September 11)
May 29, 2015
Bavarian-American Academy
Amerikahaus, Munich
University of Regensburg
10–23 May 2015
(after On Kawara)
Heike Paul
Volker Depkat
Marga Schweiger-Wilhelm
Markus Heide
Silvia Spitta
Florian Tatschner
John Landreville
Mary Catherine Lawler
Jessi Lee Jackson
Barry Shank
… More
April 4, 2015
American Comparative Literature Association
Seattle, 26–29 March 2015
(after On Kawara)
renee hoogland
Anjuli Raza Kolb
Marjorie Levinson
Jonathan Stalling
Nick Admussen
Jinyi Chu
Jacob Edmond
Paul Manfredi
Florian Wagner
Yang Zi
… More
