Reading Reginald Gibbons in July/August (’06) The American Poetry Review. Fortunately, the Marks on the Page Are Alien. He draws upon and explores ideas of Cixous. The column is rich and dense, of course wise, evocative. What he’s up to is this:
My goal remains to say something about how writing, and reading too, can take one productively out of oneself (or can invite one to work against one’s own grain) and thereby get closer to the truth of one’s own lived experience, and the experience of others. One can leave home, one can travel away, outwardly and inwardly, and look back. One cannot expect to succeed entirely, but can a writer refuse to attempt such a departure?
Part of us, familiar or new, is created on the page, toward which we depart from ourselves.
And if, by departing, we writers and readers die a little to ourselves as we think we are, then who are we?
These last two statements (statement & question, actually) are related to this.