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July 3, 2017
Plan B is Poem of the Week!
Mark Olival-Bartley has published the first 22 (of 101) tercets of “Plan B,” my poem refusing normalization after the 2016 election, in his Poem of the Week series in Munich. I will read it, and Franziska Ruprecht will perform the poem in German translation, along with other work, on Thursday, July 6, 7:30 PM, at the JYM in Munich. Click here for more information.
June 10, 2017
Support for Profs. Stephen Ratcliffe and Roscoe Mitchell
Like many in academia and the arts, I am concerned—even outraged—at the news that eleven tenured or ranked faculty are being considered for dismissal at Mills College. Wayne State University, where I teach, had a recent experience with expedient budget solutions that affect tenure, and condemnation and reputational damage were swift—and had the administration gone through with its plans, severe. Wayne State would have lost credentials, grants, students, and in the long run would have jeopardized accreditation. I can see similar negative outcomes for Mills College should you proceed with this action—already, the news has been widely disseminated.
November 13, 2016
The New Blast (second 25)
Blast your Existential Threats!
Blast being Painted into a Corner!
Blast your need for Boundaries!
Blast all Boundaries whatsoever!
Blast the Line, the Fence, the Wall!
Blast dichotomy of Spatial Regions!
Blast anything Red, Blue, and Purple!
Blast the Undermining of Gray Areas!
Blast the Destruction of the Zone!
Blast the Silence of the Majority!
Blast the Rule of Enforced Quietude!
Blast any Liquidation of Avant-Gardes!
Blast not Talking in the Workplace!
Blast the Denial of Public Discourse!
Blast the Truth of Perpetual Distortion!
Blast our Perverse Triumph of the Will!
Blast our Regime of Monumentality!
Blast the New Sinking of the Titanic!
Blast the Engineers of False Hope!
Blast any Mention of Hope Altogether!
Blast the Stasis of Nonexistent Change!
Blast you Pimps of Hope and Change!
Blast Progressivism and its Illusions!
Blast the Rule of Regressive Psyches!
Blast the Ruse of Cynical Reason!
[after Wyndham Lewis; to be contd.]
November 12, 2016
The New Blast (first 25)
Blast the Brutalitarians!
Blast the New Barbarians!
Blast the use of Brute Force!
Blast the poetics of Domination!
Blast the Six Million Nonactors!
Blast the end of Moral Scruples!
Blast the guiles of Mendacity!
Blast the flipping of the Rust Belt!
Blast surplus of Data Analytics!
Blast ruse of Informed Judgment!
Blast all False Prognosticators!
Blast the Primal Horde of Bros!
Blast Little People Talking Big!
Blast Big People Talking Down!
Blast the rise of Family Dynasties!
Blast fascination of Filthy Lucre!
Blast the servitude of Denial!
Blast empty places to Fill In!
Blast the Reality TV of Choice!
Blast the choice of Reality TV!
Blast endless receding Horizons!
Blast the Abyss of every Ground!
Blast all forms of Normalization!
Blast containments of Narrative!
Blast _____ fill in the Blanks!
[after Wyndham Lewis; to be contd.]
October 2, 2016
Announcing Questions of Poetics:
Language Writing and Consequences
in a numbered and signed limited edition.
Both paperback and hardcover editions are available directly from the author; the paperback edition may be purchased from University of Iowa Press, which is offering a 35% discount for six months, and as well as at Amazon.com and other online suppliers.
See linked page for ordering information. Friends may purchase the paperback edition at author’s cost plus postage; the hardcover edition (limited to 75 copies) is available to friends for $50 and to institutions and collectors for $75.
September 3, 2016
Free Speech Movement
Ansel Adams
Allen Ginsberg
Black Panther Party
Robert Duncan
W.S. Merwin
Denise Levertov
Robert Creeley
Robert Grenier
1–10: “Non-Events”
… More
August 10, 2016
Announcing publication of
Questions of Poetics: Language Writing
and Consequences
“Questions of Poetics is full-on Watten, a book with sharp edges, relentless intelligence, and an unwavering conviction that the arts have serious work to do.”
—Peter Nicholls, author, George Oppen and the Fate of Modernism
“Questions of Poetics represents a major statement by one of the highest profile poet-critics of the day. Its arguments concerning genre, form, particularity, and negativity represent a solid, easily grasped, portable way of thinking about the ongoingness of the avant-garde, its continual diversification and reinvention. Moreover, Watten offers a persuasive reappraisal of Language writing and its place in American literary history.”
—Brian Reed, author, Nobody’s Business: TwentyFirst Century Avant-Garde Poetics
Official release date: September 1, 2016. For the University of Iowa Press flyer, see here; for ordering options, see here.
May 21, 2016
Thursday, May 5
Michael Gottlieb
Luc Tuymans @ David Zwirner
Tracey Emin @ Lehman Maupin
The Tale of Tales, dir. Matteo Garone (IFC)
Friday, May 6
Michael Golston
Bruce Andrews
Unfinished @ Met Breuer
Andy Warhol, Electric Chairs @ Venus
Jean-Michel Basquiat, images and words @ t/k
David Hammons @ Mnuchin
Allen Jones @ Michael Werner
Anne Collier @ Anton Kern
Richard Serra @ Gagosian
Sigmar Polke @ David Zwirner
Mike Kelley @ Skarstedt
Jasper Johns @ Mathew Marks
Carlos Motta @ PPOW … 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)
