Bad HistoryPoetry. Cultural Writing. The poem looks back on the decades previous to the first Gulf War and forwards--toward a duration of events, which, because the poem is in history, do not cease to occur. In a famous modern definition, an epic poem is a poem including history. In Barret Watten's BAD HISTORY, history includes the poem. The poem, too, becomes the event of its own recording. Watten is the co-editor of POETICS JOURNAL and author of TOTAL SYNTAX, essays on modern and contemporary poetics, as well as the long poems PROGRESS and UNDER ERASURE. He teaches modernism and cultural studies at Wayne State University in Detroit. |
Common terms and phrases
acts Alameda Allan McCollum André Breton Angeles Riots Atelos Barrett Watten become Berkeley blank Bob Perelman bomb California cartoon Chinese Cantos clouds communication condition Cornelia Parker Creeley crisis culture Daniel Davidson death desire disbelief dream driver duration empty Executor Ezra Pound flat horizons Frame Gallery gaze hard going hedgehogs I-80 in lane Imagine intellectual Iraqi Jackson Mac Low John Cage killed kind Kosuth language light live London Lyn Hejinian means ment Missile Narrative never numbering machine Olympic operations painting Partnership Persian Gulf Persian Gulf War poem Poetics Journal poetry properties Rachel Whiteread rear retrospective Robert Creeley San Francisco scene screen script sentence sequence Sherrie Levine social space Street string struck target tion trauma universal utopian vehicle violently walls westbound I-80 white male heterosexual William words writing York Zukofsky