Burton Hatlen
Encyclopedia
Burton Norval Hatlen was an American
literary scholar and professor
at the University of Maine
. Hatlen worked closely with Carroll F. Terrell, an Ezra Pound
scholar and co-founder of the National Poetry Foundation
, to build the Foundation into an internationally known institution.
Hatlen was seen as a mentor
by several of his former students, most notably author Stephen King
and his wife, Tabitha King
. In a postscript
included in his 2006 novel
, Lisey's Story
, King said of Hatlen, "Burt was the greatest English teacher I ever had."
. His father Julius immigrated in 1907 from Norway. He married Lily Torvend, a second generation Norwegian-American; they sometimes spoke Norwegian
at home. Julius worked as a farm worker, but eventually ran his own apricot
orchard
. The couple, who were Lutherans, had three sons of which Burton was the youngest.
Hatlen received a full scholarship
at the University of California, Berkeley
, where he earned his bachelor's degree
. He later earned two separate master's degrees from both Harvard University
and Columbia University
. Following his master's, Hatlen taught at colleges in both Tennessee
and Ohio
. Hatlen finally earned his doctorate
from the University of California, Davis
in 1973. His doctoral dissertation was on the 17th century English
poet
, John Milton
.
Hatlen and his first wife, Barbara Karlson (b. 1938 d. 2010), had two daughters. The couple moved to Orrington, Maine
, in 1967 and later divorced. He married his second wife, Virginia Nees-Hatlen, an English professor, in 1983.
Hatlen stood at over six feet tall.
in Orono, Maine
, in 1967. He quickly became an active and, by all accounts, highly devoted faculty member in the school's Department of English. Hatlen often juggled heavy teaching and research schedules. He eventually became chair of the department, where he oversaw academic grant
applications, nationwide promotion
s and academic tenure
s, and a host of other responsibilities. Hatlen delivered more than 100 academic papers from 1977 to 2007 alone, at conferences ranging from Finland
, Canada
, the United States
, London
and Paris
. He also served as Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities for one year.
Hatlen never published a collection of his own scholarly writings. However, his poetics
and other writings often appeared in literary scholarly journals. And his editorial work at the National Poetry Foundation had a profound impact on a scholarly community interested in the objectivist tradition and contemporary North American writers as diverse as H.D.
, Allen Ginsberg
, Amiri Baraka
, Ted Enslin, and Margaret Avison
. His edited collection of essays George Oppen: Man and Poet was a work of which he was especially proud. He also contributed editorials and letters on local and international politics to local Maine newspapers occasionally.
Hatlen received the UM Presidential Research and Creative Achievement Award for his work in 1996. In 1999, Hatlen volunteered to cut his salary so the Department of English could hire two new professors, instead of only one. He continued to work part-time, even when he became ill, though he carried a full time work load. He spent the later part of his academic career focusing on scholarship on a wide range of modernist poets and fiction writers (chiefly Kay Boyle and Stephen King), as well as continuing to write his own elegaic poetry.
Hatlen was known as a campus activist. He marched against both the Vietnam War
in the 1960s, as well as the War in Iraq, as recently as 2007, in Bangor, Maine
. He was one of the founders and a life-long member of the campuses Marxist-Socialist committee, which oversees a lecture series and an interdisciplinary minor.
scholar and the founder of the National Poetry Foundation
. Together, Terrell and Hatlen, in conjunction with the University of Maine English department, built the Foundation into an internationally known and respected academic center based at UM. Under Terrell and Hatlen, the Foundation focused on the works of Ezra Pound, as well as modern and contemporary forms of poetry
.
One of the academic missions of the National Poetry Foundation was the publication of two journals
, the Paideuma and the Sagetrieb. The Paideuma focuses on Ezra Pound studies, as well as American
and British modernism
. The second journal, Sagetrieb, which was founded by Hatlen in 1982, focuses on the study of contemporary and Objectivist poets
such as George Oppen
, William Carlos Williams
and Louis Zukofsky
.
The Foundation became known for its summer poetry conferences which gathered poets and scholars at the University of Maine. The conference also allowed students and professional, published poets to meet informally and get to know one another, which closely followed Hatlen's own informal teaching style.
Hatlen became director of the National Poetry Foundation in 1991.
in the late 1960s, with fellow UM colleague, Jim Bishop, and several other writers. These writers included several of Hatlen's students, including author Stephen King
, Tabitha Spruce, poet Sylvester Pollet and Michael Alpert, who currently serves as director of the University of Maine Press as of 2008. Stephen King
and Tabitha Spruce later fell in love and married after meeting at Hatlen's workshops.
The members of Hatlen's writing workshop continued to meet on and off for the next 15 years. Hatlen's own contributions to the workshop culminated in 1987, when he published his only book of poetry, I Wanted to Tell You.
King and Hatlen remained personally and professionally close throughout Hatlen's life. Hatlen's helped King develop his own writing style
through his workshops. King often sent his unpublished manuscripts to Hatlen for his review and perusal. King told the Bangor Daily News
that, "He (Hatlen) saw so much more of what I was doing than I did." In turn, Hatlen wrote several scholarly essays and critique
s of Stephen King's works.
Stephen King named a handful of his fictional characters
after Burton Hatlen, including the prison librarian
in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, whom King named Brooks Hatlen.
Stephen and Tabitha King
donated $4 million dollars to the University of Maine in 1997, which included $1 million dollars specifically for Hatlen to hire new arts
and humanities
professors.
, on January 21, 2008. He had been undergoing treatment for prostate cancer
over the last 10 years. He was 71 years old and is survived by his second wife, Virginia Nees-Hatlen, his two daughters, Julia Hatlen (and partner Mark Hayes) and Inger Hatlen (and husband Joseph Daniels), stepdaughter Hedda Steinhoff, and granddaughter Solveig Daniels. In addition, he is survived by his brother Philip Hatlen, nieces and nephews, and other relatives in California and Norway.
Author Stephen King told the Bangor Daily News in reaction to Hatlen's death that, "Burt was more than a teacher to me. He was also a mentor
and a father figure
...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."
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
literary scholar and professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
at the University of Maine
University of Maine
The University of Maine is a public research university located in Orono, Maine, United States. The university was established in 1865 as a land grant college and is referred to as the flagship university of the University of Maine System...
. Hatlen worked closely with Carroll F. Terrell, an Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
scholar and co-founder of the National Poetry Foundation
National Poetry Foundation
The National Poetry Foundation is a book publisher founded in 1971 by Carroll F. Terrell who built its reputation with Burton Hatlen at the University of Maine in Orono. Today it publishes poetry by individual authors as well as both journals and scholarship devoted to Ezra Pound and poets in the...
, to build the Foundation into an internationally known institution.
Hatlen was seen as a mentor
Mentor
In Greek mythology, Mentor was the son of Alcimus or Anchialus. In his old age Mentor was a friend of Odysseus who placed Mentor and Odysseus' foster-brother Eumaeus in charge of his son Telemachus, and of Odysseus' palace, when Odysseus left for the Trojan War.When Athena visited Telemachus she...
by several of his former students, most notably author Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
and his wife, Tabitha King
Tabitha King
Tabitha King is an American author and activist. She is married to writer Stephen King.-Family:King met her husband, author Stephen King, in college through her work-study job in the Fogler Library. Their daughter Naomi Rachel was born in 1970. They married on January 2, 1971...
. In a postscript
Postscript
A postscript, abbreviated P.S., is writing added after the main body of a letter . The term comes from the Latin post scriptum, an expression meaning "written after" .A postscript may be a sentence, a paragraph, or occasionally many paragraphs added, often hastily and...
included in his 2006 novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
, Lisey's Story
Lisey's Story
Lisey's Story is a novel by Stephen King combining the elements of psychological horror and romance. It was released on October 24, 2006, and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 2007.-Plot:...
, King said of Hatlen, "Burt was the greatest English teacher I ever had."
Early and personal life
Burton Hatlen was born on April 9, 1936, in Santa Barbara, CaliforniaSanta Barbara, California
Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...
. His father Julius immigrated in 1907 from Norway. He married Lily Torvend, a second generation Norwegian-American; they sometimes spoke Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
at home. Julius worked as a farm worker, but eventually ran his own apricot
Apricot
The apricot, Prunus armeniaca, is a species of Prunus, classified with the plum in the subgenus Prunus. The native range is somewhat uncertain due to its extensive prehistoric cultivation.- Description :...
orchard
Orchard
An orchard is an intentional planting of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit or nut-producing trees which are grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of large gardens, where they serve an aesthetic as well as a productive...
. The couple, who were Lutherans, had three sons of which Burton was the youngest.
Hatlen received a full scholarship
Scholarship
A scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further education. Scholarships are awarded on various criteria usually reflecting the values and purposes of the donor or founder of the award.-Types:...
at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, where he earned his bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
. He later earned two separate master's degrees from both Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
and Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. Following his master's, Hatlen taught at colleges in both Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
and Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
. Hatlen finally earned his doctorate
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
from the University of California, Davis
University of California, Davis
The University of California, Davis is a public teaching and research university established in 1905 and located in Davis, California, USA. Spanning over , the campus is the largest within the University of California system and third largest by enrollment...
in 1973. His doctoral dissertation was on the 17th century English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
.
Hatlen and his first wife, Barbara Karlson (b. 1938 d. 2010), had two daughters. The couple moved to Orrington, Maine
Orrington, Maine
Orrington is a town in Penobscot County, Maine, United States. The population was 3,526 at the 2000 census.-History:Orrington was originally part of Condustiegg Plantation, which also included the present-day cities of Bangor and Brewer. Orrington was incorporated as a town in 1788 with its major...
, in 1967 and later divorced. He married his second wife, Virginia Nees-Hatlen, an English professor, in 1983.
Hatlen stood at over six feet tall.
Career
Hatlen arrived at the University of MaineUniversity of Maine
The University of Maine is a public research university located in Orono, Maine, United States. The university was established in 1865 as a land grant college and is referred to as the flagship university of the University of Maine System...
in Orono, Maine
Orono, Maine
Orono is a town in Penobscot County, Maine, United States. It was first settled in 1774 and named in honor of Chief Joseph Orono of the Penobscot Nation. It is home to The University of Maine. The population was 10,362 at the 2010 census.- Geography :...
, in 1967. He quickly became an active and, by all accounts, highly devoted faculty member in the school's Department of English. Hatlen often juggled heavy teaching and research schedules. He eventually became chair of the department, where he oversaw academic grant
Grant (money)
Grants are funds disbursed by one party , often a Government Department, Corporation, Foundation or Trust, to a recipient, often a nonprofit entity, educational institution, business or an individual. In order to receive a grant, some form of "Grant Writing" often referred to as either a proposal...
applications, nationwide promotion
Promotion (marketing)
Promotion is one of the four elements of marketing mix . It is the communication link between sellers and buyers for the purpose of influencing, informing, or persuading a potential buyer's purchasing decision....
s and academic tenure
Tenure
Tenure commonly refers to life tenure in a job and specifically to a senior academic's contractual right not to have his or her position terminated without just cause.-19th century:...
s, and a host of other responsibilities. Hatlen delivered more than 100 academic papers from 1977 to 2007 alone, at conferences ranging from Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. He also served as Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities for one year.
Hatlen never published a collection of his own scholarly writings. However, his poetics
Poetics
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory...
and other writings often appeared in literary scholarly journals. And his editorial work at the National Poetry Foundation had a profound impact on a scholarly community interested in the objectivist tradition and contemporary North American writers as diverse as H.D.
H.D.
H.D. was an American poet, novelist and memoirist known for her association with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets such as Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington...
, Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...
, Ted Enslin, and Margaret Avison
Margaret Avison
Margaret Avison, OC was a Canadian poet who twice won Canada's Governor General's Award and has also won its Griffin Poetry Prize. "Her work has often been praised for the beauty of its language and images."-Life:...
. His edited collection of essays George Oppen: Man and Poet was a work of which he was especially proud. He also contributed editorials and letters on local and international politics to local Maine newspapers occasionally.
Hatlen received the UM Presidential Research and Creative Achievement Award for his work in 1996. In 1999, Hatlen volunteered to cut his salary so the Department of English could hire two new professors, instead of only one. He continued to work part-time, even when he became ill, though he carried a full time work load. He spent the later part of his academic career focusing on scholarship on a wide range of modernist poets and fiction writers (chiefly Kay Boyle and Stephen King), as well as continuing to write his own elegaic poetry.
Hatlen was known as a campus activist. He marched against both the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
in the 1960s, as well as the War in Iraq, as recently as 2007, in Bangor, Maine
Bangor, Maine
Bangor is a city in and the county seat of Penobscot County, Maine, United States, and the major commercial and cultural center for eastern and northern Maine...
. He was one of the founders and a life-long member of the campuses Marxist-Socialist committee, which oversees a lecture series and an interdisciplinary minor.
National Poetry Foundation
He began working with Carroll Terrell shortly after his arrival at the University of Maine. Terrell is best known as a noted Ezra PoundEzra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
scholar and the founder of the National Poetry Foundation
National Poetry Foundation
The National Poetry Foundation is a book publisher founded in 1971 by Carroll F. Terrell who built its reputation with Burton Hatlen at the University of Maine in Orono. Today it publishes poetry by individual authors as well as both journals and scholarship devoted to Ezra Pound and poets in the...
. Together, Terrell and Hatlen, in conjunction with the University of Maine English department, built the Foundation into an internationally known and respected academic center based at UM. Under Terrell and Hatlen, the Foundation focused on the works of Ezra Pound, as well as modern and contemporary forms of poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
.
One of the academic missions of the National Poetry Foundation was the publication of two journals
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
, the Paideuma and the Sagetrieb. The Paideuma focuses on Ezra Pound studies, as well as American
American modernism
American modernism like modernism in general is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic...
and British modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
. The second journal, Sagetrieb, which was founded by Hatlen in 1982, focuses on the study of contemporary and Objectivist poets
Objectivist poets
The Objectivist poets were a loose-knit group of second-generation Modernists who emerged in the 1930s. They were mainly American and were influenced by, amongst others, Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams...
such as George Oppen
George Oppen
George Oppen was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism, and later moved to Mexico to avoid the attentions of the House Un-American Activities Committee...
, William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
and Louis Zukofsky
Louis Zukofsky
Louis Zukofsky was an American poet. He was one of the founders and the primary theorist of the Objectivist group of poets and thus an important influence on subsequent generations of poets in America and abroad.-Life:...
.
The Foundation became known for its summer poetry conferences which gathered poets and scholars at the University of Maine. The conference also allowed students and professional, published poets to meet informally and get to know one another, which closely followed Hatlen's own informal teaching style.
Hatlen became director of the National Poetry Foundation in 1991.
Stephen King
Burton Hatlen formed a writing workshopWriting Workshop
Writing Workshop is a method of writing instruction developed by Lucy Calkins and educators involved in the Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University in New York City, New York. . This method of instruction focuses on the goal of fostering lifelong writers...
in the late 1960s, with fellow UM colleague, Jim Bishop, and several other writers. These writers included several of Hatlen's students, including author Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
, Tabitha Spruce, poet Sylvester Pollet and Michael Alpert, who currently serves as director of the University of Maine Press as of 2008. Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
and Tabitha Spruce later fell in love and married after meeting at Hatlen's workshops.
The members of Hatlen's writing workshop continued to meet on and off for the next 15 years. Hatlen's own contributions to the workshop culminated in 1987, when he published his only book of poetry, I Wanted to Tell You.
King and Hatlen remained personally and professionally close throughout Hatlen's life. Hatlen's helped King develop his own writing style
Writing style
Writing style is the manner in which an author chooses to write to his or her audience. A style reveals both the writer's personality and voice, but it also shows how she or he perceives the audience, and chooses conceptual writing style which reveal those choices by which the writer may change the...
through his workshops. King often sent his unpublished manuscripts to Hatlen for his review and perusal. King told the Bangor Daily News
Bangor Daily News
The Bangor Daily News is an American newspaper that was founded on June 18, 1889; in 1900 the paper merged with the Bangor Whig and Courier. The Bangor Publishing Co. publishes the paper in Bangor, Maine, in addition to two weekly papers distributed by the BDN and several others distributed by the...
that, "He (Hatlen) saw so much more of what I was doing than I did." In turn, Hatlen wrote several scholarly essays and critique
Critique
Critique is a method of disciplined, systematic analysis of a written or oral discourse. Critique is commonly understood as fault finding and negative judgement, but it can also involve merit recognition, and in the philosophical tradition it also means a methodical practice of doubt...
s of Stephen King's works.
Stephen King named a handful of his fictional characters
Character (arts)
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
after Burton Hatlen, including the prison librarian
Librarian
A librarian is an information professional trained in library and information science, which is the organization and management of information services or materials for those with information needs...
in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, whom King named Brooks Hatlen.
Stephen and Tabitha King
Tabitha King
Tabitha King is an American author and activist. She is married to writer Stephen King.-Family:King met her husband, author Stephen King, in college through her work-study job in the Fogler Library. Their daughter Naomi Rachel was born in 1970. They married on January 2, 1971...
donated $4 million dollars to the University of Maine in 1997, which included $1 million dollars specifically for Hatlen to hire new arts
ARts
aRts, which stands for analog Real time synthesizer, is an audio framework that is no longer under development. It is best known for previously being used in KDE to simulate an analog synthesizer....
and humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
professors.
Death
Burton Hatlen died of pneumonia at the Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, MaineBangor, Maine
Bangor is a city in and the county seat of Penobscot County, Maine, United States, and the major commercial and cultural center for eastern and northern Maine...
, on January 21, 2008. He had been undergoing treatment for prostate cancer
Prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is a form of cancer that develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system. Most prostate cancers are slow growing; however, there are cases of aggressive prostate cancers. The cancer cells may metastasize from the prostate to other parts of the body, particularly...
over the last 10 years. He was 71 years old and is survived by his second wife, Virginia Nees-Hatlen, his two daughters, Julia Hatlen (and partner Mark Hayes) and Inger Hatlen (and husband Joseph Daniels), stepdaughter Hedda Steinhoff, and granddaughter Solveig Daniels. In addition, he is survived by his brother Philip Hatlen, nieces and nephews, and other relatives in California and Norway.
Author Stephen King told the Bangor Daily News in reaction to Hatlen's death that, "Burt was more than a teacher to me. He was also a mentor
Mentor
In Greek mythology, Mentor was the son of Alcimus or Anchialus. In his old age Mentor was a friend of Odysseus who placed Mentor and Odysseus' foster-brother Eumaeus in charge of his son Telemachus, and of Odysseus' palace, when Odysseus left for the Trojan War.When Athena visited Telemachus she...
and a father figure
Father Figure
"Father Figure" is the U.S. number-one song written and performed by George Michael and released on Columbia Records in 1988 as the third single from the album Faith.-History:...
...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."