Burton Norval Hatlen (April 9, 1936 – January 21, 2008) 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 an afterword to his novel Lisey's Story, King paid tribute to Hatlen:

Burt was the greatest English teacher I ever had. It was he who first showed me the way to the pool, which he called “the language-pool, the myth-pool, where we all go down to drink.” That was in 1968. I have trod the path that leads there often in the years since, and I can think of no better place to spend one’s days; the water is still sweet, and the fish still swim.

Burton Hatlen was born on April 9, 1936, in Santa Barbara, California. His father Julius immigrated in 1909 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 Harvard University and Columbia University. Following his master's, Hatlen taught at colleges in 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. He stood at over six feet tall.

Hatlen arrived at the University of Maine 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 promotions and academic tenures, 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.