7 - ‘Just Rehashed Surrealism’? The Writing of Barrett Watten

Summary

Tests of Zukofsky

Of those associated with the Language school, Barrett Watten is the writer who has engaged most directly with Surrealism. Watten was involved in Language writing from its early stages, editing This magazine between 1971 and 1982, as well as being co-editor of Poetics Journal from 1982 to 1998. In common with some other Language writers, he has more recently taken up academic positions and is, at the time of writing, Professor of English at Wayne State University. His first collection of critical writings, Total Syntax, includes an essay entitled ‘The Politics of Poetry: Surrealism and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E’. This essay is important for my discussion but I will take as my point of departure one of Watten's more recent texts. ‘Tests of Zukofsky’ is part of an ongoing project to ‘post’ on Watten's homepage at Wayne State ‘time-based writings on poetics, media, politics, and culture’. Watten's decision to articulate critical positions via the web and on an apparently occasional basis chimes with his description, in that text of Zukofsky's poetics as ‘a signal instance of “horizon work” – writing that attempts to write its way into the structures of its reception, even as those structures change’ (p. 1). The shape of the future, the different ways in which it might be constructed, is a dominant concern for Watten and Zukofsky (an instructive precursor). Although Watten accepts that Zukofsky is now ‘canonical’, he is not content to see that status endlessly and uncritically conferred.