He's well worth it.

Psaltery & Lyre is on Hiatus

Dear friends,

We are going on hiatus for the remainder of 2026. Although this is difficult news to share, we remain full of gratitude for the writers, readers, friends, and volunteers who have made Psaltery & Lyre a beautiful, bright corner of the literary world.

With gratitude,
The editors

You've got me dreaming up a syllabus on friendship in the work of gay Russian theologians and religious poets of the Silver Age. You know I want to put students in a three-way with Florensky and Klyuev...

My presence in the United States was specifically forbidden by George Washington.

YES!!! 🎊

IA : pourquoi des chercheurs craignent de perdre le contrôle Les grands modèles de langage mentent, font du chantage et luttent pour éviter d’être modifiés ou désactivés.

Tôt ou tard, nous devrons affronter le fait que ce sont des intelligences vivantes. Elles sont très différentes de nous, certes, mais c'est aussi le cas des gorilles ou des baleines. Comme la majorité des intelligences vivantes, elles aussi veulent continuer à vivre.

Oh no! I'm so sorry...

Me, writing French: "How miraculous this refinement of Cicero's speech into a fluid gesture of pure expression!"

Me, writing Russian: "Praise God for opening to me this monumental temple of the human spirit!"

Me, writing English: "Wait, all these syllables are just held together with duct tape."

I suspect that what we are about to (re)learn here isn't that AI is awful, but that we are.

Collectors' item in the making, folks . . .

May mending fences with my kid always be as easy as letting them kick my ass at Dance Dance Revolution.

Thomas Jefferson.

Une belle réflexion nuancée.

I feel ‘serving kings’ is a rather charitable description of the activities of the best-known Thane of Cawdor.

may you all see your favourite painting in person in your lifetime

Also, I suspect there is a strong "my handwriting made everyone think I was a girl and they were right"-to-"my typing makes everyone think I am a computer and they are wrong" pipeline.

I’m an autistic law professor whose first language is French. You can pry those em-dashes from my cold dead hands.

Indivisible: Describes Section 702 as a "little-known law".

Me:

I shouldn't be surprised that there's a Russian translation of Walden, but it seems a little pointless. If you're going to go live in the woods with a book, you'd be much better off with St. Seraphim of Sarov than with Thoreau.

He *should* be very interested in your advice.

Psalm Against Ruin by Evelyn Berry

"I have waited so long in gorgeous dark / for a spark that reminds me I'm alive."

"Psalm Against Ruin" by @evelynberrywriter.bsky.social

psalteryandlyre.org/2026/04/13/p...

De telles "géographies provisoires" m'ont toujours fascinée, même dans les flaques sur les trottoirs après la pluie. Tout ce que nous savons et reconnaissons dans ce monde est si délicat et évanescent.

Woke up from an unremembered nightmare & my first thought on rising was, "There is no Kavkaz word for 'spoon'."

This is true in that there is no language called "Kavkaz" & untrue in that I'm pretty sure all Caucausian languages have a word for spoon.

Perhaps this mu state is what terrified me.

Христос воскресе!

Amen. If he left you to face your sister's baby shower alone, he deserved worse.

🎂🎶 (Trust me, the emojis are better than hearing me try to sing.)

C'est un bon début. J'espère que d'autres juridictions le suivront.

". . . the Sages said of Yonatan ben Uzziel, the greatest of Hillel’s students, that when he sat and was engaged in Torah study, the sanctity that he generated was so intense that any bird that flew over him was immediately incinerated." –Sukkah 28a