Michael Macy left his family’s tobacco farm at age 17 for the inside-out world of Harvard Yard. Currently the Goldwin Smith Professor of Arts and Sciences at Cornell, his obsession with redundancies reflects a deeper fascination with language as a window into what people are thinking and feeling and how they interact. He commutes to Cornell from Canada where he cooks, skis, works on his latte art, debates his teenage daughter, and writes an occasional sonnet to his wife.