WEBVTT

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So when I first handed this
manuscript into my editor,

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she does, as she usually does,
as she did as she usually does,

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she handed it right
back to me, pretty much.

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But this time,
with the suggestion

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that I take out the
longer prose-like pieces.

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I had three very long
what I call zuihitsu.

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They look similar,
like prose pieces.

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She felt that these longer
pieces were weighing down

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the more lyric poems.

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But she said, why don't you
take one of those zuihitsu

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and just take some
little sections

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and flip them through
the whole collection

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to give it a through line?

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So I decided to take the
zuihitsu on sexual cannibalism.

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Why not?

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[LAUGHTER]

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OK.

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So here's-- I'll read a couple
of bits of prose from that

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original zuihitsu.

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Nowadays, when friends read
about Darwin and something

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like sexual cannibalism, they
immediately expect a poem.

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Then, there's my own jealousy
of the material itself

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that someone will
get to it first.

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Whatever the pressure that
the female mantis devours

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the head of the
still-mating male and then

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moves on to the
rest of his body is

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a shocking bit of information.

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Because I am past
childbearing years?

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Because I have daughters?

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Or because it just seems
vulgar to eat in bed?

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