Barrett Watten
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thisdirect.bsky.social
Barrett Watten
@thisdirect.bsky.social
Poet critic editor and publisher; professor at Wayne State University Detroit; Questions of Poetics: Language Writing and Consequences (U Iowa P, 2016); Не то: Избранные тексты/Not This: Selected Writings (Polyphem, 2024); www.barrettwatten.net.
Zone: correlations (1973 2021) event page: 20% off from Chax Press through December. www.facebook.com/events/16639...
December 6, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Balzac in Paris.
November 26, 2025 at 9:27 AM
Simone Fattal recommends Zone.
November 26, 2025 at 9:26 AM
Pubication announcement / Paris reading 11/25.
November 22, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Here is the sale price line for ordering Zone: correlations from Chax: bit.ly/3LUJVMI
November 21, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Publication day for Zone: correlations; first appearance in a bookstore (Third Mind Books, Ann Arbor).
November 19, 2025 at 11:27 PM
Change the narrative so that it outlasts the news cycle.
November 7, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Arrived and very beautiful! Very literary as well. Can't wait to spend time with it.
October 26, 2025 at 5:06 PM
ACCEPTED! MLA TORONTO, JANUARY 8–11, 2026

“Twentieth-First-Century Jackson Mac Low”
Barrett Watten, Wayne State University

This special session tracks the work of poet, composer, playwright, and performer Jackson Mac Low (1922–2004).

With Clarinda Mac Low, Tyrus Miller, Michael O'Driscoll, BW.
October 21, 2025 at 1:05 PM
You do need to see that video. I won't post it here, but I could have. It's easy to find.
October 19, 2025 at 9:57 PM
Reposted by Barrett Watten
It's not just that the NYT chose to ignore the massive protests -- 300,000 in their city alone! -- but that the piece they *did* run on the front page about Democrats is almost cartoonishly bad in how much it whines that they're just not doing what A.G. Sulzberger LXVII wants them to do.
October 19, 2025 at 2:27 PM
October 19, 2025 at 3:10 AM
Yes, I was there. No Kings march in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Crowd size 5K-8K and very good-spirited, if a bit polite. My "Siempre Antifascista" t-shirt, made In China, was the only such I saw.
October 18, 2025 at 10:47 PM
My morning's work was to update what I've been doing in "Language Writing and Beyond," uploading some narrative framing that verges on polemic to introduce the take-home exam I gave to students last week. Enjoy, and why not, what responses might you have? bit.ly/3WLwH74
October 18, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Page 12.5. Academic Contexts II. bit.ly/46maTEI
September 6, 2025 at 12:42 AM
Page 12.4: Academic Contexts II. Continuing my effort to answer the "blog"; the difficulty continues. bit.ly/3JI1zSQ
September 6, 2025 at 12:40 AM
Page 12.3: Academic Contexts I. Off my desk and into virtual space: my effort to take down the anonymous blog, answering the seven faculty who posted on it. This is difficult material, as are and were the times. bit.ly/4pmVgEL
September 6, 2025 at 12:37 AM
I am uploading my syllabus, minus boilerplate plus some notes about my course and teaching in general. Fourteen weeks is not enough, obviously! I am looking ahead and back but also to the ongoing middle of Language writing and its offshoots, controversies, and reception after 2000. bit.ly/4n2TpCJ
August 30, 2025 at 6:25 PM
Document 108: Global Poetics CFP. Proposal for a multi-session seminar at ACLA, Montréal, February 26–March 1, 2026 with link to portal; deadline October 2. Organized by Barrett Watten and Lauri Scheyer. Circulate widely! bit.ly/4mzKg4K
August 27, 2025 at 9:42 PM
Due to popular demand: a page of "Language Notes" on my fall teaching, and links to pdfs of the eight parts of Eleana Kim's excellent history of Language writing up to 1994. Thanks to Nada Tzirre Gordon for keeping it alive up to this very moment. bit.ly/4oEm56N
August 15, 2025 at 6:36 PM
Seminar is up: "Radical Particularity and Global Poetics: Critical Regions of Cultural Transmission"; click here: bit.ly/47p0okX
August 9, 2025 at 3:47 AM
Writing up a seminar proposal for ACLA (due today, btw); here's the title: “RADICAL PARTICULARITY AND GLOBAL POETICS: CRITICAL REGIONS OF CULTURAL TRANSMISSION.” Stay tuned for the portal for submitting paper proposals, coming August 26.
August 8, 2025 at 6:34 PM
The second installment of my replies to literary persons on the "blog," starting with the best-known figure. An act of radical self-reflection as one may also imagine. In one case, I ask for readers' help in identifying the author of a post. bit.ly/4lDlhNy
July 24, 2025 at 3:46 AM
Some forgotten myth prompts me to take on this task: here I begin my response to the literary persons who signed on to the "blog"—not comfortable but clarifying is my hope. bit.ly/4f5uFaw
Page 12.1: Literary Contexts I « barrettwatten.net
bit.ly
July 20, 2025 at 8:10 PM
President Trump will be suing the Wall Street Journal, News Corp and Mr Murdoch shortly.
July 18, 2025 at 3:37 AM