I’ve been feeling so down lately.
Katherine Min, whose work I mentioned in last week’s AnnaGrams and am now devouring and encourage you to do the same, said, “Most writers I know are lonely people. In order to observe the world, you need to remain slightly separate from it.”
And that seems true, though I also know plenty of writers who are social, who have few qualms about going out in the world, talking with strangers, and living savory lives.
With my hearing, I can’t talk to strangers—not easily, anyway. Connection comes only after straining, after trial and tumult, and so most days I don’t bother. Most days I don’t leave my house.
I try to go online, to find people that way, but every day seems to bring a fresh horror (looking at you, Arizona), and besides, it’s not the same, is it?
Still, you wobble along, liking and hearting and reaching, removing little stones from your bones in hopes of paving a way for others to cross over.
This is one.
It’s National Poetry Month, which I learned yesterday because I am always woefully behind on such things.
But you’ll find ways to get a little more poetry in your life in some of the links below, and, for fun, here’s an old blog post on 24 poems to read (and the best times to read them), which remains one of the most popular posts on my website—a fact that baffles me to this day.
Maybe I’ll do another such post one of these days. What do you think?
Advice
Navigating casual dating when she wants more
Can you start a relationship long distance?
Friends with benefits gift etiquette
Freebies
Cake and Cunnilingus Erotic Romance
Linkspiration
’s life lessons from Mr. Rogers ’s creative professional’s survival guide’s amazing list of hundreds of poets to read on Substack (myself included)Griffin Hansbury’s interview in
’s Oldster Magazine is rife with beautiful advice on aging, queerness, and the “tremendous liberation to being out-of-sync with what is normal” wonders when we lost curiosity for each other has great resources and ideas for celebrating national poetry month reminds us that rejection is the norm (which is something I need to hear approximately three times a week) has ever receivedHow Embracing Uncertainty Can Improve Your Life (Greater Good)
The three-or-four-hours rule for getting creative work done (Oliver Burkeman)
Book recs based on how you’re feeling (Books by Mood)
Are you doing too much? (Freakonomics) (I mean, the answer is probably yes if you’re inclined to click on this, which I most certainly was)
Goodreads, but make it for podcasts (Goodpods)
Hot Box
Yours,
P.S. “Grief has no predictable stages. It hits you like a car accident and is as varied, arrives and fades like a bruise, remains like a bad knee in wet weather, heals like an amputation. That bruise is its only rainbow, its colors smeared, Munch-like, across the real-life sky. It feels like nothing, feels like you're fine, like you're dying, like you're perfectly fine again. It lives in your organs, lives in your blood, in the daylight that touches the walls, in the color of the daylight on the walls of your room, in that part of you that remembers, the happiest time you ever spent, so long ago now as though it happened to someone else.”—
Thanks for the kind mention!
Thank you Anna for mentioning my newsletter issue about celebrating poetry month. Read your 24 poems to read (and the best times to read them) - loved that. I vote for another such post. Hope you are feeling better and getting an upswing from the arrival of Spring.