Nail Biting

In which our heroine continues to blow her authority effect in blogging about the book:

So, I've sent the email below to several friends who might either know or at least have an intuition about how to proceed here in the To Stein or Not to Stein crisis.

One has sent back that he can't think because his beloved dog just died. So face Jerusalem and send him love. Because this is terrible and shattering.

One wrote back that "editors are very simple people" and to just send them the book as I choose to complete it, not bother the seriously overbooked acquisitions editor with compositional and thematic issues about which they will know not too much and will have to consult with review boards. A good point.

One wrote back that I might simply send a revised chapter summary reflecting the changes. Give, as is my impulse, full disclosure and show that:

the new shape of the book is simply so much more compelling elegant and leads to this gorgeous sort of meta-historical moment of writing about these poems that are constructed dialogically, and that moreover, and to boot!, Graham's poems in two of her books are very much having a conversation with Bonnefoy and Perse!! And all that neatly theorized in the poetics of being two, you see, because it so works.

Because honestly, Stein and all that is another book about this poetics, but about Another Poetic Tradition -- not so organic as I had wanted to cram it into being. (a move quite contra the whole ethos of Irigaray's ethics and the poetics, moreover) (the quite clever conclusion solving a major critical cat fight-- a ha!)

This is my impulse. Fair warning, chance for them to think about it. It might also just be suicide, since the peer review person/s will have no idea what the proposal said.

So, if you haven't answered my email, do. I need to take the temperature. And if you happen to be or know someone with practical insight here, do let me know.

Meanwhile, I maunder on.