Lately I’ve been transferring a lot of files out of PDF into WordPress posts. The process results in huge numbers of textual errors that I’ve been cleaning up with massive batch search-and-replace on hundreds of files at once. Finding the error patterns, solving for them using regex, tinkering with bits of code—it’s all poetry.
Worrying about words can take you into the weird bowels of files and laptops and down strange and appealing avenues that seem far removed from John Donne and Sylvia Plath. If you like poetry, there are ways to play with it outside of books.