Abstract

This essay, initially presented as the Duffy Lecture (2007) at the University of Notre Dame, explores the applicability of Talmudic and Rabbinic interpretive traditions for a contemporary American experimental poetics. Drawing heavily on the writings of Marc-Alain Ouaknin and Susan Handelman, I argue for the ongoing conversational relationship of text and commentary. The Jewish poetics that I describe in this essay is insistently open-ended and generative, relying upon a strategic undermining of mastery. The essay also discusses an ongoing compositional practice of mine (for poetry) which I call serial heuristics.

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