I am interested in the ways in which the behavior of (or ascribed to) language intersects with human behavior, and in how this intersection is theorized (and, in fiction, dramatized) by writers
and artists. My investigation comprises historically avant-garde theories of the mingling or collision of art and life, of word and object, and of language and action, as well as the poetic
legacy (strong in American poetry) of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of language. Since behaviors are defined through boundary-making, I am particularly interested in the effects of various attempts to cross or ignore boundaries: through translation (and false translations), collaborations and other attempts to erase conventional authority (e.g., using chance operations, claiming otherworldly inspiration), and what I term linguistic slumming—most clearly delineated in constraint-based writing, such as John Cage’s work or that of the OULIPO, but intriguingly present elsewhere in Modern and postmodern poetry and fiction.