iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 2h

Terrible idea if you want your kid to become a poet though.

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 11h

We have a copy of this in Kislak don’t we? Octavius Catto’s name there, great man, great baseball player.

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

If you DON’T pronounce it …. Bloody typos

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

If you pronounce it “drahft” it’s not a Real Ale(tm)

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Each banknote should have a different drahft beer on the back

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Honestly that kickoff decision is a firing offense. 20 yard line, 8 seconds, no time out so all you can do is a Hail Mary. Which is more likely to result in a win? It’s obvious.

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Tightrope walking across Piazza Maggiore, Bologna

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Happy birthday! I was just thinking of you while reading Carson's "Between Us And". The last line (in some copies) is like the opposite of enjambment-the only one that doesn't reach the right margin. It works wonderfully for what the line is. Not sure what we'd call this. Anyway, happy birthday!

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

One more thing: Google has many more hits for "or" than "for" giraffe: OR: www.google.com/search?q=%22... FOR: www.google.com/search?q=%22... And Gemini knows that the "or" version is from Carson's poem, but it doesn't know that the "for" version is. Which is right?

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

It's turtles all the way down, in other words. These are the kind of questions that editors spend a lot of time thinking about. (Your mileage may vary!) And they are questions not only for dead authors and ancient texts, but for all texts.

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

If someone has a physical copy of Red Doc> on them, please let us know what's there. But that won't give us a definitive answer either: books have errors, misprints are corrected in later printings, an author may later tell us that she actually meant X but Y got printed for some reason ...

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The Poetry Foundation version wiggles around on the right margin; Bob gets to the end of his line. (Again you can see why I think most internet posters are grabbing this one.) Did Carson intend the lines to be laid out in this way? Do her intentions control what the text "is" in the first place?

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

What about justification? In the Google Books copy of Red Doc>, the lines of the poem are perfectly justified on the right margin ... with the exception of that last line -- a very funny line, and its failure to quite reach the right margin makes it funnier to me, a short sharp shock of a line.

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

3) a more subtle difference points to WW Greg's distinction between "substantives" & "accidentals", and to the difficulty of telling them apart. Which parts of a text are "part of" the text? Does the particular font matter? Line breaks in poetry surely matter, but not in prose, right?

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Carson certainly plays with words and puns a lot. "or" might show how the Romans could not name this animal except as a hodgepodge of known categories, a chimera that's neither/nor, either/or? I strongly suspect "for" is the reading Carson intended, but it's not so easy to know as you might think!

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

2) should it be "or 'giraffe'" or "for 'giraffe'"? Surely "for" makes the most sense, and it's in the copy presumably closest to Carson's own hand (mediated by Google Books though, so...) Then again, there'e the editorial principle en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectio_..., which might incline us to "or"

en.wikipedia.org

Lectio difficilior potior - Wikipedia

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

There are two big differences here (well, big to an editor!): 1) should "Ox" in "musk Ox" be capitalized? It's not in the Google Books copy of Red Doc>, but it is in the others. A minor change? But then doesn't capitalizing Ox suggest just the sort of Platonic categorizing she's talking about?

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I'll give you a second to spot the differences. And if you do, you'll understand why I say that the Poetry Foundation probably underlies the other internet posts.

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Take one of Carson's most famous poems: "Between Us And" (a great poem!). Here's what I find on Google Books in their copy of Red Doc>, alongside the Poetry Foundation website, which seems to be the source of most of the posts of the poem I've found on Bluesky, Insta, and other sites:

Google Books version of "Between us and"

Poetry Foundation website version of "Between us and"

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Anne Carson has got me thinking about editing. I think most people understand why "old" authors need editors: obsolete words need explaining, the text may be obscure or may vary in different versions. But with modern authors, I think most people take for granted that the text is what it is.

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Like most madeleines, this one is more complicated than people remember. What people are usually recalling with that alcohol-y smell aren’t mimeographs (which was a stencil tech that didn’t use alcohol) but spirit duplicators (Ditto machines). Proust didn’t remember his childhood objectively either!

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

What’s that you say? You’re curious how 1620s mercantilist theory intersected with the rise of and transformations in English tragicomic drama? I got you. muse.jhu.edu/article/2252...

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Mercantilism trending like it’s 1621

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Reposted by Zachary Lesser

Adam Smyth @adamwithbooks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Record what you're doing on your phone at 5.35pm BST on Friday 2 October and be part of an international collage of one minute on the planet! 📽️ ⏱️ 🌍 adamsmyth.substack.com/p/be-part-of...

adamsmyth.substack.com

Be part of a film!

An invitation!

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Reposted by Zachary Lesser

Shakespeare Census @shakespearecensus.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Very happy that we have won the 2025 Innovation Award from @bsashakespeare.bsky.social! It’s a wonderful honor, and we’re so proud and glad the site has found users.

The BSA innovation award, a lively hand-carved block of wood with lettering on it

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Shakespeare scholars are familiar with this

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Reposted by Zachary Lesser

A. M. Vincent @vincent.northsky.social · 06/09/2026

Spare a thought for us historians of religion. My inbox has seen things you wouldn't believe, and unfortunately they are NOT all lost like tears in the rain. Some of them have cornered me after public lectures.

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

This is terrible. A wonderful and historic place. Surely some billionaire can step up and help?

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

My kid’s school is doing this too.

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I left before Curtis arrived. I loved it there though.

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I think that part of it is slightly under the radar right now. But Kite is def focused on in-class work, long reading/discussion labs, and ways to avoid AI-fication

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

At UIUC it was about Berkeley. And there’s nothing Penn wants more than to be Princeton…. This bs never ends!

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I actually think it’s quite winnable at places that UMass Amherst.

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Yes for sure. The deck is stacked but that doesn’t mean it’s not a winnable fight. In fact the hyper competitiveness at flagship state U’s (which was very evident at UIUC when I was there) could help things. You can point to it as something to emulate

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

#3 is absolutely the future. My uni has just instituted a new core curriculum with tech-free classrooms and long “humanities labs” without screens. Etc. great stuff. Not gonna happen at PSU-Abington about 30 minutes away, I predict.

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I’ve been very lucky with all my collaborations. Another favorite chapter in an edited collection was one I did with Whitney Trettien (who I think has left Bluesky), which was a pandemic brain-saver!

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

This one because it was so fun to write with Peter while we were teaching a class together on the Pavier Quartos, meeting each Sunday for dinner, course prep, and article outlining. And because it led to my book on the 1619 quartos.

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Reposted by Zachary Lesser

claire m. l. bourne @roaringgirle.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

now in press! 📖 the contributions to this collection are brilliant and a little bit weird (compliment!) & i can’t wait for it to be out in the world. forthcoming 2027… ✨

the table of contents of a collections called SHAKESPEARE AND TEXTUAL FAILURE printed on white computer paper. full text here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/utntr2lzaby23fzfjqhlo/TOC-shakespeare-and-textual-failure.pdf?rlkey=cog3pis71494adnioh3o0h6el&st=m5axwkxt&dl=0

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

The Jonson book is excellent. I never met him. I’m sorry to hear this.

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

He doesn’t even know that most of the history of “democracy” implemented a version of this since you had to be a property owner (plus male plus white plus…). One of the great achievements fought for in the 19th century. “You are many—they are few”

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Emily! Did you seriously try to smuggle a Philly water ice metaphor into there LRB? Bless

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Zachary Lesser @zacharylesser.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

That’s awesome! Congratulations!

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