The twentieth-century American poet, H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), was engaged in an autobiographical quest that entailed a re-appropriation of religious sources. Her long poem, Trilogy, expresses the poet’s understanding of her own spiritual origins. In a more limited sense, this work casts light on the poet’s departure from the variety of literary Modernism that was complementary to the New Criticism. Hence, the early part of this discussion discusses how her work cannot be assimilated to a comparatively “neo-classical” position that was dominant in the early phase of Modernism, particularly as it came to be defined by its foremost critics. However, both Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger are shown to be differently concerned with the problem of textuality, while H. D.’s work is situated in an alternative setting that is no longer bound to standard readings of traditional sources. Heidegger’s critique of Western metaphysics is presented as an analog to Derrida’s “textual” response to Platonism and its rationalist sequel. The reading of Trilogy that follows engages the reader historically and indicates how the poet’s cosmological vision embraces the trace of writing in a thematic of difference. The conclusion takes up the broader philosophical implications of H. D.’s significance to modern poetics.