Time and again, modern literature asks us to picture a scene so familiar it hardly bears notice: a passerby walks into, then out of, the world of a viewer. If, as often in the case of poetry and other genres of nonfiction, the viewer is a textualization of the author, it is no surprise that the figure of the passerby frequently takes on the guise of a reader, one who swims up from the undifferentiated mass of potential readers and assumes, momentarily, concrete and visible form. The connection enacted in this version of the reading encounter is not necessarily a reciprocal, that is to say mutual, affair: the author/viewer may fix on a particular passerby without having his or her glance returned, and on such occasions the encounter passes into the realm of authorial speculation. If, on the other hand, viewer and passerby exchange looks, an ambiguous transformation becomes possible, unsettling the histories of each and requiring expressive recognition of the moment that has altered, however slightly, their destinies. This moment becomes the occasion of writing; and true to its textually recursive form, recasts and repeats the experience that gave rise to it. The textual moment of recognition becomes a speech act with performative force at its disposal in the solicitation of new readers, new reading encounters.