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The Olive Tree |
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The Olive Tree |
Burton Hatlen, literary scholar, teacher, and friend to many here at UMaine died
on January 21st. A frequent speaker at Fogler Library events and longtime
support of our Library, Hatlen was always generous with his time and continued
to take on new projects, especially if they benefited students or improved the
quality of life in Maine.
Burton Hatlen received a Bachelor of Arts with honors in English from the
University of California, Berkeley, in 1958; Master of Arts in English, Columbia
University, 1959; Master of Arts in English, Harvard University, 1961; and a
doctorate in English, The University of California, Davis, 1973. Burton was a
professor of English at the University of Maine and came to the University of
Maine in 1967, after college teaching in Tennessee and Ohio. He served as chair
of the English department, 1985-88; the interim dean of the College of Arts and
Humanities, 1997-98; Fulbright Senior Lecturer in American Studies and American
Literature, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway, 1988-89. Burton also served as
director of the National Poetry Foundation for more than 15 years. Much of the
organization’s reputation was built on the publication of two journals which
Hatlen edited for many years: Paideuma, dedicated to Ezra Pound and
later broadened to include British and American modernism, and Sagetrieb,
which Hatlen founded in 1982 to explore the work of objectivist and contemporary
poets such as William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukofsky and George Oppen.
The foundation’s summer poetry conferences on the Orono campus became renowned
in literary circles for collecting erudite scholars and poets to discuss and
disseminate their views on the rarefied industry. In addition to lectures and
readings, the conferences provided attendees, many of them students, with
informal and intimate contact with poets, an approach that mirrored Hatlen’s
inclusive teaching style and advocacy for varied audiences.
Perhaps Stephen King, a former student and friend of Hatlen, said it best, "He
made people — and not just me — feel welcome in the company of writers and
scholars, and let us know there was a place for us at the table."
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Tree | Spring 2008 Issue