User:Christian Roess/sandbox

Barrett Watten reading at the Prague Microfest, May 2011. Photo: Donna Stonecipher

Barrett Watten (born October 3, 1948) is an American poet, editor, and educator often associated with the Language poets. He is a professor of English at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan where he teaches modernism and cultural studies. Other areas of research include postmodern culture and American literature; poetics; literary and cultural theory; visual studies; the avant-garde; and digital literature.

Watten is married to the poet Carla Harryman; their son, Asa, was born in 1984.

Early life and education

Watten was born in Long Beach, California in 1948. After graduating from high school in Oakland, California, he studied at MIT and the University of California, Berkeley. He majored in Biochemistry, graduating with an AB in 1969. At Berkeley he met poets such as Robert Grenier and Ron Silliman and studied with Josephine Miles in the English department. He enrolled in the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. In 1971 he and Grenier began the poetry journal This, one of the central little magazines of the Language poetry movement, which he edited with Grenier for the first three years and then alone until 1982. He graduated with a master's in fine arts degree in 1972.

Career

After graduation Watten returned to San Francisco. He continued to publish This as sole editor and became involved in the early stages of Language poetry that was developing there. In 1976 he and other poets founded the reading series at the Grand Piano coffeehouse in San Francisco that ran through 1980. From 2006 to 2010 ten members of the group published The Grand Piano, a "collective autobiography" of that period.

Watten continued to edit This until 1982 and began publishing books under the This Press imprint. The first title was The Maintains by Clark Coolidge (1973), followed by book-length works by Larry Eigner, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson, Carla Harryman, Bruce Andrews, Bob Perelman, Robert Grenier, Ted Greenwald, Alan Davies, and others. With Lyn Hejinian, he co-founded and -edited Poetics Journal, one of its theoretical venues of the movement, from 1982 to 1998.

In the 1980s Watten worked as an academic editor and then Associate Editor for the journal Representations at Berkeley. In 1989 he began graduate studies at Berkeley and received his PhD in English in 1995. He joined the English department at Wayne State University in 1994. In 1995 he was the subject of a special issue of the poetry magazine Aerial. The American Comparative Literature Association awarded him the 2004 René Wellek Prize for his book The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics.

From the 1970s and 1980s on, Language poetry was a source of sustained literary controversy. Watten was often at the center of it, beginning in 1978 with an encounter with New American poet Robert Duncan over the work of Louis Zukofsky. In the 1980s he was a central figure in what came to be known as “The Poetry Wars,” where debates over literary form and politics, language and expression raged. After his move to academia, these debates continued in online venues and listservs. In 2000, he held a celebrated cafeteria debate with poet Amiri Baraka at the “Poets of the 1960s” conference at University of Maine.

Controversy also erupted in his graduate teaching at Wayne State. A social media campaign by some students against Watten, alleging hostile interactions, resulted in an article inThe Chronicle of Higher Education that publicized their claims. The Wayne State administration hired an independent investigator, which led to disciplinary sanctions imposed in November 2019. Concurrently, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) wrote a legal opinion addressed to Wayne State, criticizing its handling of the speech issues involved. Watten's faculty union, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), filed a series of grievances citing a lack of required due process and requesting that the restrictions be withdrawn. After their being modified in arbitration, Watten has returned to teaching a full teaching schedule in 2023.

A report in The Chronicle of Higher Education published claims made by some graduate students against Watten. The Wayne State administration hired an independent investigator. In November the university informed Watten that he was suspended from teaching. Watten's faculty union, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), filed a grievance citing lack of required due process and requesting that the restrictions be withdrawn. In 2023, the restrictions were withdrawn, and Watten is teaching a full schedule.

Major work

His early creative work is collected in Frame (1971–1990), which appeared in 1997 and brings together six previously published works of poetry from the previous two decades: Opera—Works (1975); Decay (1977); Plasma/Paralleles/"X" (1979); 1–10 (1980); Complete Thought (1982); and Conduit (1988)—along with two previously uncollected texts—City Fields and Frame. Two book–length poems—Progress (1985) and Under Erasure (1991)—were republished with a new preface as Progress/Under Erasure (2004). Bad History, a book-length prose poem, appeared in 1998. Chax Press will publish a selection of recent and “recovered” experimental writings titled Zone (1973–2024) in late 2024.

Watten is co-author, with Michael Davidson, Lyn Hejinian, and Ron Silliman, of Leningrad: American Writers in the Soviet Union (1991). He has published three volumes of literary and cultural criticism: Total Syntax (1985);The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics (2003); and Questions of Poetics: Language Writing and Consequences (2016). His Berkeley dissertation is titled Horizon Shift: Progress and Negativity in American Modernism (1995), which connects form and history in the experimental writing of two women authors, Gertrude Stein and Laura (Riding) Jackson.

With Carrie Noland, he co-edited Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Displacement (2009), as well as special issues for the journals Qui Parle (2001) and the Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures (2020). In 2013, an anthology of essays from Poetics Journal was published (A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982–1998), followed in 2015 by an e-book that republished the entire journal's content (Poetics Journal Digital Archive).

Watten is also co-author, with Tom Mandel, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson, Carla Harryman, Rae Armantrout, Ted Pearson, Steve Benson, and Bob Perelman of The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography. (Detroit, MI: Mode A/This Press, 2006–2010). This work, which consists of ten volumes, is described as an "experiment in collective autobiography by ten writers identified with Language poetry in San Francisco." The project takes its name from a coffeehouse at 1607 Haight Street referred to above. The collaborative writing project began online in 1998, using Web-based software and an email listserv.

Watten's work has been translated in numerous foreign languages, with two chapbooks in French and Italian. Plasma/Parallèles/“X,” trans. Martin Richet (2007), comprises three long poems that originally appeared in a chapbook by Tuumba Press in 1979. A chapbook consisting only of Plasma, trans. by Gherardo Bortolotti, came out in 2010. His poetry provides the text for two works of urban sculpture by Siah Armajani: Six Parts of The Letter T (2003), installed in the courtyard of the Department of History, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio; and Temple Chess and Poetry Garden (2006), at the Des Moines Public Library, Des Moines, Iowa. In 2024, a bilingual edition of his work in English and Russian, titled Not This: Selected Writings/Не то: Избранные тексты, ed. Vladimir Feshchenko, is due to appear from Polyphem press in Moscow in 2024.

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External links

• Faculty webpage
• Barrett Watten.net
• The Grand Piano

Creative works

• Zone (1973–2021) (Tucson: Chax Press, forthcoming 2024)
• Not This: Selected Writings/Не то: Избранные тексты, ed. Vladimir Feshchenko, trans. Feshchenko, Ruslan Mironov, Ekaterina Zakharkhiv et al. (Moscow: Polyphem, in press 2024)
• The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography, San Francisco, 1975–1980, with Bob Perelman, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, and Ted Pearson, parts 1–9 (Detroit: Mode A, 2006–10) OCLC 166352151
• Progress/Under Erasure (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2004)
• Bad History (Berkeley, Calif.: Atelos Press, 1998; 2nd printing 2002)
• Frame: 1971–1990 (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1997)
• Under Erasure (Tenerife, Canary Is., Spain: Zasterle Press, 1991)
• Leningrad: American Writers in the Soviet Union. With Ron Silliman, Lyn Hejinian, and Michael Davidson (San Francisco: Mercury House, 1991)
• Conduit (San Francisco: Gaz, 1988)
• Progress (New York: Roof Books, 1985)
• Complete Thought (Berkeley, Calif.: Tuumba, 1982)
• 1–10 (San Francisco: This Press, 1980)
• Plasma/Paralleles/”X” (Berkeley, Calif.: Tuumba, 1979)
• Decay (San Francisco: This Press, 1977)
• Opera—Works (Bolinas, Calif.: Big Sky Books, 1975)

As editor

• Poetics Journal 1–10, with Lyn Hejinian (1981–98)
• This 1–12 (1971–82; with Robert Grenier, 1971–73)

Literary and cultural criticism

• Questions of Poetics: Language Writing and Consequences (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2016)
• The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2003)
• Total Syntax (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985)

Edited volumes

• Poetics Journal Digital Archive, digital archive of Poetics Journal (1982-98), co-edited with Lyn Hejinian (Wesleyan University Press, 2015)
• A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982–98, ed. with Lyn Hejinian (Wesleyan University Press, 2013)
• Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Displacement, ed. with Carrie Noland (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
• The Poetics of New Meaning, with introduction, Qui Parle (University of California, Berkeley) 12, no.2 (Spring/Summer 2001; appeared Fall 2001)

Chapters (last six years)

• “Global Parataxis: From documenta to The Beirut-Hell Remix,” in Globalizing the Avant-Garde, European Avant-Garde and Modernist Studies, ed. David Ayers and Sascha Bru, vol. 8 (Berlin: De Gruyter, in press 2024)
• “The Dark Night of the Universal: transition (1927–38) as Region of the Modern,” in Anabela Duarte, ed., Music, Avant-Gardes, and Counterculture: Invisible Cities (London: Palgrave, in press 2024)
• “Jackson Mac Low as Reading Machine: Bob Brown, Stanzas for Iris Lezak, Sampling, and Data Culture,” in Jackson Mac Low: Between Writing and Performance, ed. Tyrus Miller and Carrie Noland (Philadelphia: Slought Foundation Press, 2023)
• “Holism, Antagonism, Proto-Poetics, and Pedagogy Among the Beats,” in The Beats and the Academy: A Renegotiation, ed. Erik Mortenson and Tony Trigilio (Clemson, S.C.: Clemson University Press,, 2023)
• “Poetry as a Scene of Decision: Larry Eigner as Distributed Author,” in George Hart and Jennifer Bartlett, eds., Momentous Inconclusions: The Life and Work of Larry Eigner (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2021)

Articles (last six years)

• “Scaffolding Repetition: Gertrude Stein, Language Writing, Electronic Dance Music,” in special issue on “Poéticas e Políticas da Repetição” (Poets and Politics of Repetition), ed. Bruno Ministro, eLyra 22 (Porto, Port.; December): 29–55; online: https://bit.ly/3THq8lG
• “Liberation and the Historical Present: Gertrude Stein @ Zero Hour,” in “Feeling in Time: Radio Free Stein,” special section ed. Adam Frank, Textual Practice 36, no. 1 (December 2022): 2038–59; print and online: https://bit.ly/3CcnR8q
• "Практическая утопия языкового письма: Oт книги Ленинград до Движения Оккупай" (Language Writing’s Concrete Utopia: From ‘Leningrad’ to Occupy), trans. Vladimir Feshchenko, Новое литературное обозрение (New Literary Review, Moscow) 168 (February): 200–217
• “Modernity @ Zero Hour: Three Women (Lee Miller, Hannah Höch, Anonyma),” in special forum, “Modernity @ Zero Hour: The Question of the Universal and the Origins of the Global Order,” Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures 4, no. 1 (June 2020)
• “Ashbery Alpha and Omega: Presentism, Historicism, and Vice Versa,” Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures (Changsha, China) 2, no. 2 (December 2019)

Selected critical discussion

Chapters and articles

• Hejinian, Lyn. “The Sad Note in the Poetics of Consciousness.” Allegorical Moments: Call to the Everyday. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan UP, 2023.
• Sokolova, Olga V., and Ekaterina Zakharkiv. “Лингвопрагматические сдвиги в новейшей поэзии: Российско-американские параллели” (Linguopragmatic Shifts in Recent Poetry: Russian-American Parallels). Литература двух Америк (Literature of the Americas) no. 12 (2022).
• Kreiner, Timothy. “The Politics of Language Writing and the Subject of History.” In Annie McClanahan, ed., special issue on “Deindustrialization and the New Cultures of Work.” Post45 no. 1 (1 January 2019). Link here.
• Brito, Mañuel. “Nonnarrative and History in Barrett Watten’s Under Erasure.” Atlantis: Revista de la asociatión española de estudios anglo-norteamericanos 40, no. 1 (June) 2018.
• Wedell, Noura. “Progress Toward New Sentimental Educations: How Contextual and Constructivist Poetics Reframe Issues of Distribution.” Special issue, “Poètes et éditeurs: diffuser la poésie d’avant-gare américaine.” IdeAs/Idées d’Amérique 9 (Spring2017). Link here.
• Fischer, Norman. “Total Absence and Total Presence in the Work of Barrett Watten.” Experience: Thinking, Writing, Language, & Religion. Tuscaloosa: U Alabama P, 2015.
• Chaitas, Lilian. “The Duncan/Watten Debat/cl/e” and “Stalin as Linguist.” Being Different: Strategies of Distinction and Twentieth-Century American Poetic Avant-Gardes. Leiden, Neth.: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2017.
• Brito, Mañuel. “Formas y estructuras poéticas en Barrett Watten” (Poetic forms and structures in Barrett Watten). Los mejores poetas americanos contemporáneos: Charles Bernstein, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten. Ed. Brito. Madrid: Ediciones literarias mandala, 2011.
• Aji, Hélène. “Barrett Watten: Poetry and Historiography.” Poetry and Public Language, ed. Tony Lopez and Anthony Caleshu. Exeter, U.K.: Shearsman Books, 2007.
• Arnold, David. “‘Just Rehashed Surrealism?”: The Writing of Barrett Watten.” Poetry and Language Writing: Objective and Surreal. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2007.
• Blazer, Alex. “Barrett Watten: From the Other Side of the Machine.” I Am Otherwise: The Romance Between Poetry and Theory After the Death of the Subject. Normal, Ill.: Dalkey Archive Press, 2007.
• Hugill, Piers. “Watten & Hejinian (‘What, no, begin again?): or Poetry as Language’s ‘State of Emergency.’” Poetry and Public Language, ed. Tony Lopez and Anthony Caleshu. Exeter, U.K.: Shearsman Books, 2007.
• Metres, Philip. “Barrett Watten’s Bad History.” Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront since 1941. Iowa City: U Iowa P, 2007

Reviews

• Heuving, Jeanne. Review of Questions of Poetics: Language Writing and Consequences. American Literature 91, no. 4 (December 2019): 905–7. PDF here.
• Williams, Tyrone. “Examples Of: On Barrett Watten’s Questions.” Review of Questions of Poetics. Jacket2 (18 January 2019). Link here.
• Harley, Luke. “Searchlight Intelligence.: Barrett Watten’s Critical Poetics.” Review of Questions of Poetics. Journal of Poetics Research no. 9 (31 August 2018).
• Grant Matthew Jenkins. Review of Questions of Poetics. ALH Online Review, ser. 14:1 (2017). Link here.
• Segal, Eyal. Review of A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982–1998. Poetics Today 38, no. 4 (2017).
• Barry Schwabsky. “Reader’s Diary: Barrett Watten’s Questions of Poetics.” Hyperallergic (6 November 2016). Link here.
• Almon, B. Review of Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Displacement. Choice 47, no. 10 (June 2010).

Literary biography

• Debrot, Jacques. “Barrett Watten.” Dictionary of Literary Biography 193. American Poets Since World War II, 6th Ser. Ed. Joseph M. Conte et al. Farmington, Mich.: Gale Research, 1998.

Edited volume

• Barrett Watten: Contemporary Poetics as Critical Theory. Special issue ed., with introduction, by Rod Smith. Aerial 8 (1995)

Analysis of postmodernism

Main article: Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

Background

It is Jameson’s contribution to a conception and analysis of postmodernism that has had the most impact in its breadth and reach. It is Jameson’s contention that postmodernism is “the cultural expression of the current period of capitalist development”. In other words, the phenomenon of postmodernism assumes the form of an enormous cultural expansion into an economy of spectacle and style, rather than the production of goods. Therefore it is an expression of the “cultural logic of late capitalism.” This form of analysis was first developed in an article titled "Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" first published in the journal New Left Review. Jameson later expanded the article into a book, which he published in 1991.

Jameson’s argument

As mentioned in the preceding section, Jameson argued against other theorists of the postmodern by asserting that the various phenomena of the postmodern had been, or could have been, understood successfully within a modernist framework. In Jameson’s view, postmodernity's merging of all discourse into an undifferentiated whole was the result of the colonization of the cultural sphere —which had retained at least partial autonomy during the prior modernist era— by a newly organized corporate capitalism. Following Adorno and Horkheimer's analysis of the culture industry, Jameson discussed this phenomenon in his critical discussion of architecture, film, narrative, and visual arts, as well as in his strictly philosophical work. For Jameson, postmodernism, as a form of mass-culture driven by capitalism, pervades every aspect of our daily lives.

Key concepts

Two of Jameson's best-known claims from Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism are that post-modernity is characterized by "pastiche" and a "crisis in historicity". Jameson argues that parody (which implies a moral judgment or a comparison with societal norms) was replaced by pastiche (collage and other forms of juxtaposition without a normative grounding). Jameson recognizes that modernism frequently "quotes" from different cultures and historical periods, but he argues that postmodern cultural texts indiscriminately cannibalize these elements, erasing any sense of critical or historical distance, resulting in pure pastiche.

Relatedly, Jameson argues that the postmodern era suffers from a crisis in historicity: "there no longer does seem to be any organic relationship between the […] history we learn from schoolbooks and the lived experience of the current, multinational, high-rise, stagflated city of the newspapers and of our own everyday life".

Jameson's analysis of postmodernism attempts to view it as historically grounded; he therefore explicitly rejects any moralistic opposition to postmodernity as a cultural phenomenon. Instead, Jameson insist upon a Hegelian immanent critique that would "think the cultural evolution of late capitalism dialectically, as catastrophe and progress all together".

Sources for Further Study

Atlanta Journal Constitution. September 29, 1996, p. M3. Booklist. XCII, July, 1996, p. 1779. Boston Globe. October 20, 1996, p. M16. Chicago Tribune. October 9, 1996, V, p. 3. Library Journal. CXXI, August, 1996, p. 110. New York. XXIX, October 21, 1996, p. 54. The New York Times Book Review. CI, September 22, 1996, p. 11. Publishers Weekly. CCXLIII, June 24, 1996, p. 44. USA Today. November 21, 1996, p. D7. The Washington Post. September 26, 1996, p. C2.

The rise and fall of nothing or the fall and rise of nothing

Samuel H. Beer "Hartz, Louis", The "American National Biography (2003)

Ernest Becker

Becker noted that humankind requires healthy narcissism for functional purposes: [...] A working level of narcissism is inseparable from self-esteem, from a basic sense of self-worth.

Sacvan Bercovitch

Sacvan Bercovitch October 4, 1933 – December 8, 2014

Sacvan Bercovitch
Born	(1933-10-04)October 4, 1933
Died	December 8, 2014(2014-12-08) (aged 81)
Spouse	Susan L. Mizruchi
Children	Eytan (son); Sascha (son)

Infobox

Frederick Busch
Born	(1941-08-01)August 1, 1941 Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Died	February 23, 2006(2006-02-23) (aged 64) Manhattan, New York City
Occupation	Author
Alma mater	Muhlenberg College
Years active	1972—2006
Notable works	Girls
Children	Benjamin Busch

External links

• Works by or about Christian Roess/sandbox in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• On Sound and Rhythm: A Way to Start Teaching Poetry to Children and Young Adults – an excerpt from Poetry Everywhere: Teaching Poetry Writing in School and in the Community.
• Learning the Chant Poem an excerpt from Old Faithful: 18 Writers Present Their Favorite Writing Assignments.

Spanish translation Larry Levis

Larry Patrick Levis (30 de septiembre de 1946 - 8 de mayo de 1996) fue un poeta y maestro estadounidense galardonado que publicó cinco libros de poesía durante su vida. [3] Dos volúmenes más de poemas inéditos aparecieron póstumamente y recibieron elogios generales.

Juventud

Larry Levis nació en Fresno, California en 1945. Fue el cuarto (y más joven) hijo de William Kent Levis, un viticultor, y Carol Mayo Levis. [6]

”El joven Levis creció manejando un tractor , recogiendo uvas y podando vides en Selma, California , un pequeño pueblo frutícola en el Valle de San Joaquín . Más tarde escribió sobre las granjas, los viñedos y los trabajadores migrantes mexicanos con los que trabajó. También recordó pasar el rato en el salón de billar local en la calle East Front de Selma, frente a las vías del ferrocarril Southern Pacific . [7]

Educación

Levis obtuvo una licenciatura de Fresno State College en 1968, donde había estudiado con Philip Levine . Para las clases y talleres de poesía de Levine, Levis completó muchos de los poemas que aparecerían en su primer libro de poemas, Wrecking Crew (1972). Levine y Levis formaron una amistad de por vida que dejó una huella tanto en su escritura como en su arte. Cada uno continuó intercambiando poemas para crítica y consulta —ya sea por correo o en persona— durante el resto de la vida de Levis. Levine editaría el volumen de Levis publicado póstumamente en 1997, Elegy .

Levis completó una maestría de la Universidad de Syracuse en 1970, donde estudió bajo la dirección del poeta Donald Justice . Uno de los compañeros de clase de Levis en ese momento, el poeta Stephen Dunn , escribió más tarde sobre su experiencia de 1969-70 en Syracuse:

"Habíamos venido a estudiar con Philip Booth , Donald Justice, WD Snodgrass , George P. Elliott, posiblemente el mejor grupo de escritores y maestros que existía en ese momento". [8] Levis obtuvo su Ph.D. de la Universidad de Iowa en 1974. Mientras estaba en Iowa, renovó su amistad con David St. John , a quien conoció en Fresno State en las clases que tomaron con Levine. St. John luego editaría dos de las publicaciones póstumas de Levis: The Selected Levis (2000) y The Darkening Trapeze (2016). [9] En su prólogo an Elegy , Levine reconoció la guía de St. John mientras editaba ese volumen para su publicación en 1997.

Carrera académica

Levis enseñó inglés en la Universidad de Missouri de 1974 a 1980. Fue coeditor de Missouri Review , de 1977 a 1980. [10]

De 1980 a 1992, fue profesor asociado en la Universidad de Utah . [9] donde también dirigió el Programa de Escritura Creativa. [11] Fue profesor Fulbright en Yugoslavia en 1988. [12]

Desde 1992 hasta su muerte por un ataque al corazón en 1996, Levis fue poeta principal y profesor de inglés en la Virginia Commonwealth University . [4] Durante este período de tiempo, también enseñó en el Programa MFA para escritores de Warren Wilson College . [6]

premios y reconocimientos

A fines de la década de 1960, Levis había escrito muchos de los poemas que aparecerían en su primer libro, Wrecking Crew (1972), que ganó el premio estadounidense de 1971 del International Poetry Forum e incluyó la publicación en Pitt Poetry Series de la Universidad de Prensa de Pittsburg .

La Academia de Poetas Estadounidenses nombró su segundo libro, The Afterlife (1976) como una selección de poesía de Lamont . Su tercer libro de poemas, The Dollmaker's Ghost , fue seleccionado por Stanley Kunitz como ganador de la Competencia Abierta de la Serie Nacional de Poesía en 1981.

Otros premios incluyeron un premio YM-YWHA Discovery, tres becas en poesía del National Endowment for the Arts , una beca Fulbright y una beca Guggenheim de 1982 . Los poemas de Levis a menudo se incluyen en muchas antologías como American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets (2006)

Vida personal

Levis se casó tres veces. [13] Su segunda esposa fue Marcia Southwick, una colega poeta, con quien se casó el 15 de marzo de 1975. David St. John fue el padrino. [2] Juntos, la pareja tuvo un hijo, Nicholas Southwick Levis (n. 1978). Estuvieron juntos hasta principios de la década de 1980 y su matrimonio finalmente terminó en divorcio. Southwick más tarde se casó con Murray Gell-Mann , el físico ganador del Premio Nobel, en 1992.

Levis estuvo casado con su primera esposa, Barbara Campbell, de 1969 a 1973. Su tercera esposa fue Mary Jane Hale, con quien estuvo casado de 1989 a 1990. [6]

Junto con su reconocimiento profesional y artístico, Levis luchó contra la depresión y el consumo de alcohol y drogas a lo largo de su vida. [13] En parte, el documental de 2016 sobre Levis, A Late Style of Fire , [11] explora los "riesgos y sacrificios que son necesarios para vivir la vida de un artista". [14] La película muestra a Levis luchando constantemente con el “lado oscuro” de la creación artística. Esto incluía varios impulsos autodestructivos y de "chico malo" . [13] [14]

Muerte

Levis murió de un paro cardíaco provocado por una sobredosis de drogas, [15] en Richmond, Virginia , el 8 de mayo de 1996, a la edad de 49 años.

Legado

El Premio de Lectura Levis es otorgado cada año por el Departamento de Inglés y su programa de Maestría en Bellas Artes en Escritura Creativa en la Universidad Virginia Commonwealth (VCU). El premio se otorga anualmente en nombre del difunto Larry Levis al mejor primer o segundo libro de poesía publicado en el año calendario anterior. [16] Todos los años se publican ensayos y artículos sobre Levis en Blackbird , una revista en línea de literatura y artes publicada por VMU.

Dos poemas inéditos (eventualmente recopilados en The Darkening Trapeze ) aparecieron en la serie de libros The Best American Poetry en 2014 y 2016, dos décadas después de su muerte. [17] [18]

En 2016, se estrenó un documental sobre la vida y la poesía de Levis titulado A Late Style of Fire: Larry Levis, American Poet . Fue producida y dirigida por la cineasta Michele Poulos, [11] y coproducida con su esposo, el poeta Gregory Donovan. Dice Donovan:

"Fue una figura tan central para tantos poetas estadounidenses y eso sigue siendo cierto". [14]