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Is There a Distinctive Jewish Poetics? Several? Many?: Is There Any Question?
- Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
- Purdue University Press
- Volume 27, Number 3, Spring 2009
- pp. 72-90
- 10.1353/sho.0.0326
- Article
- Additional Information
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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.