Questions of Poetics is Barrett Watten’s major reassessment of the political history, social formation, and literary genealogy of Language writing. A key participant in the emergent bicoastal poetic avant-garde as poet, editor, and publisher, Watten has developed, over three decades of writing in poetics, a sustained account of its theory and practice. The present volume represents the core of Watten’s critical writing and public lecturing since the millennium, taking up the histo...

Winner of the American Comparative Literature Association's Rene Wellek Prize (2004)As one of the founding poets and editors of the Language School of poetry and one of its central theorists, Barrett Watten has consistently challenged the boundaries of literature and art. In The Constructivist Moment, he offers a series of theoretically informed and textually sensitive readings that advance a revisionist account of the avant-garde through the methodologies of cultur...

Kathy Acker was one of the most original, subversive and influential writers of the late 20th century. Known variously, and notoriously, as a consummate postmodernist, feminist, post-punk and plagiarist, her oeuvreover a dozen novels and novellashas inspired a generation of writers and artists.Lust for Life is the definitive collection of essays on Acker's inimitable work, including Peter Wollen's elegiac primer, widely considered the best introduction to Acker, and Avital ...

Lyn Hejinian and Barrett Watten are internationally recognized poet/critics. Together they edited the highly influential Poetics Journal, whose ten issues, published between 1982 and 1998, contributed to the surge of interest in the practice of poetics. A Guide to Poetics Journal presents the major conversations and debates from the journal, and invites readers to expand on the critical and creative engagements they represent.In making their selections for the guide, the editors ha...

The highly influential Poetics Journal, whose ten issues were published between 1982 and 1998, contributed to the surge of interest in the practice of poetics. Edited by internationally recognized poet/critics Lyn Hejinian and Barrett Watten, the journal presents major conversations and debates, and invites readers to expand on the critical and creative engagements they represent. This archive re-presents virtually all the articles originally published in Poetics Journal, organized alphabe...