Amittai F. Aviram

New York, NY, USA

++1 646 483 2639
amittai dot aviram at yale dot edu

I am a PhD student in Computer Science at Yale University, specializing in systems and doing research on deterministic parallel computing under Professor Bryan Ford. This work is meant, among other things, to help us take advantage of the new multicore architectures with reliable results. Before coming to Yale, I studied computer science at Columbia University's School of General Studies. And before that, until 2004, I was a professor of English and Compara tive Literature at the University of South Carolina.

The Prose section has links to a couple of CS-related items, including my B+ tree implementation. In addition, there are links to several of my academic essays on poetry and philosophy, which represent my main intellectual project while a literature professor: to define the difference between fiction and nonfiction (with poetry as a kind of fiction) and the consequences of that distinction to education and society. A poem is never a message, hidden or otherwise, but a game of imitating messages. Indeed, no work of art is ever a message, though it may well play games with the stuff of messages. The life of the poet or artist has nothing to do with our appreciation of his or her works. Inquiring into the creator's life leads us away from a genuinely artistic experience and thus violates the creator's intention. An artist's biography may be useful only as an inspiring story of achievement.

Also posted are many of my poems. Although I have had several of my poems published in conventional print and online venues, my enthusiasm for the "poetry business" is hardly fervid, and I am grateful for the technology that enables me to make these poems available to anybody who might happen to enjoy them. Giving pleasure is what poetry and the other arts are all about. The rest is nonsense.

For more focused information about my computer science research, please see my research page.