So when I first handed this manuscript into my editor,
she does, as she usually does, as she did as she usually does,
she handed it right back to me, pretty much.
But this time, with the suggestion
that I take out the longer prose-like pieces.
I had three very long what I call zuihitsu.
They look similar, like prose pieces.
She felt that these longer pieces were weighing down
the more lyric poems.
But she said, why don't you take one of those zuihitsu
and just take some little sections
and flip them through the whole collection
to give it a through line?
So I decided to take the zuihitsu on sexual cannibalism.
Why not?
[LAUGHTER]
OK.
So here's-- I'll read a couple of bits of prose from that
original zuihitsu.
Nowadays, when friends read about Darwin and something
like sexual cannibalism, they immediately expect a poem.
Then, there's my own jealousy of the material itself
that someone will get to it first.
Whatever the pressure that the female mantis devours
the head of the still-mating male and then
moves on to the rest of his body is
a shocking bit of information.
Because I am past childbearing years?
Because I have daughters?
Or because it just seems vulgar to eat in bed?