“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

I know you’re all dying for my deeply med­i­tated con­sid­er­a­tion of Ron Silliman’s com­ment policy, but sorry folks, real and press­ing work is still clog­ging up the pipes.

May I sug­gest a good book to ease into your August?

I’m thrilled to announce that depress, the print deploy­ment of dig­i­tal emu­nc­tion, is launch­ing today with the pub­li­ca­tion of Joshua Baldwin’s Poems and Fake Book Reviews. Josh’s fake book reviews have long been one of my favorite fea­tures of this site, and I couldn’t be hap­pier that a book full of them con­sti­tutes the first emis­sion of what promises to be a wildly spo­radic pub­lish­ing enterprise.

Poems and Fake Book Reviews includes fif­teen fake book reviews (includ­ing six not avail­able online), “Red Hook Frag­ments,” “Los Ange­les Series,” and “Four Archi­tec­ture Poems.” The forty-​page, limited-​edition chap­book fea­tures a let­ter­press cover, teal end­pa­pers, and strik­ing illus­tra­tions by the author. All that, plus ship­ping and han­dling, for just ten dol­lars. Buy one now!

For more infor­ma­tion, check the new depress web page:

http://www.digitalemunction.com/press

A Ques­tion Mark Above the Sun: Doc­u­ments on the Mys­tery Sur­round­ing a Famous Poem “by” Frank O’Hara 

Sports­man and DE alum­nus Kent Johnson’s provoca­tive spec­u­la­tions about the prove­nance of “A True Account of Talk­ing to the Sun at Fire Island” are joined in a new volume with his “critical novella” on con­tem­po­rary British poets, Cor­roded by Sym­bol­ysme, which orig­i­nally appeared in Chicago Review. I would pay the $20 that Punch Press is charg­ing for one of its 100 lim­ited edi­tion copies just for a print of the cover alone, which I hereby nom­i­nate pret­ti­est of the year. When you throw in the charm of Pro­fes­sor John­son, you have quite a deal. Sub­scribe here.