You prob­a­bly remem­ber that part of A Move­able Feast when Gertrude Stein tells Ernest Hem­ing­way, “You can either buy clothes or buy pic­tures. It’s that simple. No one who is not very rich can do both.” Well, she was right, mostly, except that these days it seems like good clothes and good pic­tures are so expen­sive that no one who is not very rich can buy either.

But there’s hope, friends! For just ten dol­lars you can buy some­thing better than cloth­ing and pic­tures both: the new hand-​sewn let­ter­press chap­book by Peter O’Leary called Benedicite, which is part of a longer work he’s been writ­ing for some time called The Phos­pho­res­cence of Thought. Peter’s a friend, but even if he weren’t I’d still admire him as a poet and a man, all the more because his bio now says that “vocations to poetry and reli­gion have com­mit­ted him to the pur­suit of an itin­er­ar­ium mentis in deum,” which I think you’ve got to respect even if you think reli­gion is loony (which I cer­tainly don’t). And if I’m cor­rect in remem­ber­ing that he read from Benedicite ear­lier this year, then I can promise you won’t be dis­ap­pointed by this new work. In the process you’ll be help­ing Answer Tag Home Press con­tinue its ter­rific work.

And all for just ten dol­lars, cheaper than a used pair of jeans or a visit to Dis­trict 9. The book is being pro­duced for fall dis­tri­b­u­tion, so reserve your copy now by send­ing money (check or hidden cash) to Answer Tag’s pro­pri­etor David Pavelich at:

1636 West Thorn­dale Avenue, Third Floor
Chicago, IL 60660
david (dot) pavelich (at) gmail (dot) com

Or check out the full formal announce­ment after the jump…

An op-​ed about steering-​wheel Breath­a­lyz­ers sand­wiched between two columns that open with Ted Kennedy men­tions? And you thought this was a lib­eral newspaper…

I like the Bryan twins as much as the next guy—I even knew one of them a little back in the day—but you really have to wonder whether we need two in-​depth pro­files of them in the same week:

From The New Yorker:

From the Times Magazine: