“The most unusual appli­ca­tion of the O death [where is thy sting?] sen­tence arose out of a naming coin­ci­dence. A report on the 1994 Gram­mys focused on a well-​known pop singer. The head­line ran: Mock­ery, where is thy Sting?: Gordon Sumner, caus­ing a buzz at the Gram­mys. The pun has since been used sev­eral times. It evi­dently proved irre­sistible in 2007 when Sting’s group, Police, had a reunion. One reviewer, it seems, found the occa­sion unin­spir­ing: Sting, where is thy sting?”—David Crys­tal, Begat

LOVE this essay.

When Jordan rec­om­mended this book to me a couple of months ago, I had reser­va­tions; I’m not always a fan of the Marcus approach, for rea­sons sug­gested here (e.g., “Depending on your tastes, this is either spell­bind­ing secret his­tory or a rote exer­cise in épater le bour­geois…overeager to replace piety with kitsch”). Jordan then emailed a pdf of the entry on Hank Williams to per­suade me. It was good. So when I saw the book fresh on the shelves of the AUB library—an improb­a­ble sight to be sure—I got my hus­band to borrow it for me.

This post is not about the book, but about the way two essays re: poetry glanced off each other and illu­mi­nated some­thing awfully depress­ing for me.

My review of James Schuyler’s Other Flow­ers is up, part of The Nation’s Spring Books Issue.