An article in the Boston Globe on Nov. 24 indicated that Melinda T. Koyanis, copyright-and-permissions manager for the Harvard University Press, made a statement to The Crimson about my manuscript, Poetic Work of Emily Dickinson: A Readers' Text. I quote: "Koyanis told The Harvard Crimson that the professor's understanding of the poet was 'inaccurate' and that 'even [his] word choice was wrong.'"
These are curious charges in view of the fact that neither of the two readers paid by the University of North Carolina Press to evaluate my manuscript for publication found such egregious classes of error as did Koyanis. Both readers strongly urged publication, made detailed suggestions for expanding the introduction and pointed out some typos and mistranscriptions in the working draft that hey scrutinized.
Funny that a textual scholar of national standing and a leading authority on Dickinson should both overlook problems as fundamental as an inaccurate understanding of the poet and mistaken "word choice" on my part.
--Phillip Stambovsky,
Associate Professor and Department Chair, Albertus Magnus College
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