This paper considers reading a hermeneutical co-respondence with understanding's becoming. It describes how understanding's plurality is caught up in the dialogical interplay of reading, rhetoric, and rhythm characteristic of hermeneutic engagement. Reading positions a reader in relationship with a text seeking participation in the matter under consideration. As such, its potential for creating new understanding lies in a reader's ability to attend to unfamiliar forms of expression and engage with the speculative nature of sense and sense-making. Rather than reduce hermeneutic practice to an unmoored relativism, reading hermeneutically fosters a radical responsibility that comes with the uncertain and difficult labor of speculative thinking.