In its most straightforward sense, the social space of writing can mean the representation within texts of the spatial dimensions of social relations; more esoterically, it can refer to the abstraction of literature's conditions of possibility, suspended between the (always social) acts of reading and writing (cf. Blanchot). In the performative mode that certain poets undertake, however, it designates most often a projection of possible social relations proposed by writers and enacted ("completed," in Whitmanís optimistic phrase) by readers. Social space in this third sense depends upon the provisionality of individual instances of writing and reading, upon the incompleteness attending every solicitation of a reader's attention. Such a conception does not recognize literature's removal from the interactive flows that characterize the social world at large; instead it seeks to extend the avenues of such interaction through the world of writing. The risks of such a projective strategy are obvious; a work may fail to reach its readers, both literally and metaphorically. Yet it is the risk of failure that conditions the particular kind of sociality modern writing invites and seeks to sustain. Guarantees of universal comprehensibility, fixity of cultural reference, and equality of access are dissolved under the sign of modern social space; in their stead, contingency and self-selectivity become the primary attributes of meaningful encounters within an importunate world of words.