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Helen's Gifts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Extract

I'm struggling now, trying to write, to say anything, to follow the command “write it!” what i really need is an e-mail from Helen, telling me to sit down, to say what it is that I want to say and then to go about saying it. She would probably give me an ideogram, direct me to a page of Ernest Fennollosa's The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, then add how much she was looking forward to seeing the essay in print, on real paper, out there in the world. She would also, perhaps by way of closing, remind me that writing was a practice of making oneself vulnerable, and that wisdom wasn't going to come uninvited if you didn't let go of the need for some security.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2015

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References

Works Cited

Derrida, Jacques. The Gift of Death. Trans. Wills, David. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy.” New Literary History 6.1 (1974): 574. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rūmī, Jalāl al-Dīn. The Essential Rumi. Trans. Barks, Coleman. New York: Harper, 2010. Print.Google Scholar