I left Blanchot off my list of formative readings, along with Frost, Reverdy, Dickinson, Kafka. Byron's Don Juan made a big impact on me, at about the same time as I read Ko and The Duplications. And James Joyce, how could I forget that? Even though I never made it all the way through Ulysses until Grad School, I read the opening chapter at least 10 times. Same with Proust, I think the opening 50 pages of Swann's Way has been extremely influential on me, read in both languages.