Special Personal Request: Kind and gentle reader, my dear friend Chloe’s sister, Aimee Brookens, DO, is raising funds to help pay six months of rent and cover the renovation costs of opening a medical clinic. “Unity Health Center will prioritize caring for the uninsured, underinsured, and those utilizing Medicaid while emphasizing equitable and responsible care for minority groups and all historically underserved populations including BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, Hispanic or Latinx. By creating a welcoming environment and building a trusting relationship between the medical team and patient, Unity Health Center will create a medical home that fosters healing and growth in the Greater Lansing [Michigan] community.” ANY amount you can give to help would be greatly appreciated, tax deductible, and donations can be made online at Unity Health Center. Thank you!

1. Poetry: Learning the Soft Way by James Crews, and in related James Crews news Episode 163 of Emerging Form podcast: James Crews on the Radical Act of Rest, On My History of Kissing Everyone At Parties by Isabelle Correa on The Slowdown with Maggie Smith, Twenty Seven Haikulings from Costa Rica and Nicaragua and Maximum Strength and When I Feel I Do Not Belong and Waking to Twenty-Two Degrees on April 24 and I left the ocean and Letter to an Unnamed Star by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Wage Love by Moudi Sbeity on Heart Poems, Cynthia Wanders My Neighborhood by Thomas Centolella and In the not-not-woods by Malia Maxwell and Love Poem to Taco Bell by Rebecca Bornstein on Poets.org, Bravery Is Your Companion by Julie Barton, Become Unusable by Frederick Joseph, The Kraken by Dante Di Stefano and My Father’s Painting by Bryan Walpert and Sleepless City of Rising Light by Matt Joseph on Rattle, A question that’s guided me for 30 years by Pádraig Ó Tuama on Poetry Unbound, What the Doctor Said by Raymond Carver shared by Patti Digh, Poet Ada Limón Has a Trick for Public Speaking (“Plus, her entertaining strategy, favorite lip gloss, and a beautiful way to think about death”), Initiate yourself into the world of magical things, “Do not wait to be invited {3 poems from Hermit Season}” on Earth & Verse, and this from Kristin Noelle‘s recent newsletter:

“This is a blessing for the ones who feel sad

For the ones whose limbs feel heavy
and hearts feel weighed down.

For the ones who can’t quite name the cause,
or there’s too many causes to name.

If you’d like, you could start here:

One long, slow breath.
One long, slow exhale.
One hand on your heavy heart.

‘Dear heart,’ you could say.
‘Dear heavy heart.’

And after a few more breaths,
you might move that hand to cup your cheek
and with a grandmother’s tender love,
you might hold your hand there.

‘Precious one,’ your hand could say.
And, ‘Yes, love,’
Which is to say Yes,
you are feeling all of this.
You are holding all of this.
This is all so heavy now.

Maybe there’s nothing else to do just now.

Maybe there’s no where else to be.

Maybe sadness can be here,
and like the green that emerges silently
from barren branches in spring—
green that at first is not green,
but scraggly nubs of no-green—
like that green, maybe not-sadness will arrive in time
and offer you new gifts
beyond the ones that sadness brings.

There is so much life pulsing beneath the surface of you.
Swirling in the spaces around you and between you
and all that is.
The impulse to shift
to grow
to mutate
to break apart
to come together
to fall down
and rise up
to change seasons
to push out blossoms that look and smell sweet.
Sadness can’t stop any of this.

So maybe it’s okay that it’s here.

‘Precious one,’ I say to you with your sadness.
And: ‘Yes, love.'”

Also, in related poetry news, a new podcast, The Poetry Hotline. “The plan will be to have a biweekly podcast where I invite my poet friends to read a poem aloud, to talk briefly about their piece and maybe answer a couple of questions. Then, I will give a little pep talk at the end.” Or, the short version: “A biweekly poetry newsletter, pep talk and podcast. Poetry as a life preserver.”

2. This actually is my first rodeo (“Why being new at life is not the same as failing at it”) by Jasmine on The Tiny Joy Project. 

3. What to Do When the Signs Stop. (“How I learned to talk to Andrea again”) by Megan Falley.

4. Accidental art therapy by Jenny Lawson.

5. Life is a Potluck, (“sometimes all you have to offer are scanned notebook scribbles”) by Brad Montague on The Enthusiast.

6. Good stuff from The Awkward Yeti: Courage Building and Mondays.

7. Good stuff from Open Secrets: So It Goes (“Could getting rid of my estranged family’s gifts heal me?”) and I’m Italian? (“How a DNA test, not mine, changed my life”).

8. A Missed Goodbye, or Perhaps Not by Swasti Bhattacharyya. “Life continues. There is no need for goodbyes.”

9. Good stuff from Jamie Attenberg on Craft Talk: About a Tree (“I see it every day”) and When Changing Tense Makes You Tense (“The right but annoying move”).

10. Rehabilitating the Active Imagination: Samantha Harvey on How to Be a Reader in the Age of Fractured Attention on The Marginalian.

11. Reclaiming Our Hijacked Attention from Kaira Jewel’s April 2026 Newsletter.

12. I Missed the Fox, “And I think it means something” on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad.

13. No Crumb. “A list post including dreams, food, books, the garden, and more” by Erin Geesaman Rabke.

14. For Americans Who Feel Lost in America on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz.

15. The Case for “Strategic Laziness,” According to Artists and Athletes. “Rest and creativity go hand in hand. As these pros explain, downtime improves performance, focus and long-term success.”

16. This Is a Gardening Show review – Zach Galifianakis’ charming new series feels like perfect TV on The Guardian. “Part lesson, part lark, these 15-minute episodes are a total joy. They have such a deliriously light touch they will make you want to run outside and plunge your hands into the soil.”

17. The Best Literary Fiction of April.

18. Nobody talks about why most of the people who actually change their lives didn’t follow a system, didn’t read a book, and didn’t set goals, they just finally admitted something to themselves and everything downstream of it slowly reorganized. “The warehouse shift that shattered my color-coded self-help journals taught me what thousands of productivity gurus couldn’t: real transformation happens when you’re too exhausted to maintain the lie anymore.”

19. Repetition, Repair, and Restoring the Broken Chain, “A prompt from my daughter” by Jena Schwartz.

20. Imagining Her Back to Herself, “She was more than the way she was found” by Patti Digh.

21. Live Simply: 10 Lessons for a Lighter Life by Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

22. Of Teachers and Cheaters, Rules and Tools. “Great artists steal, right?” by Danny Gregory.

23. Tick-Tock, Mister Wick from Chuck Wendig on Terrible Minds on his 50th birthday.

24. In times of destruction, create something: things to make by Isabel Abbott.

25. My family tried to eat fewer ultra-processed foods for five years. Here’s what we learned on The Guardian. “Cutting UPFs from our grocery list was expensive, laborious and time-consuming.”

26. 4 Things That Are Not Your Responsibility — Even If Your Anxiety Says They Are. “Consider this your permission slip to let go of the pressure.”

27. What to Do If You Hate Your Job—but Can’t ‘Just Quit’.

28. Why rest alone doesn’t restore energy.

29. And finally, I love this idea from Austin Kleon.

1. Poetry: To the Sea by Tracey Knapp and “I came here to be a poet …” by Michael Montlack on poets.org, “World Leaders Praise Pakistan as a Mediator” by Khushrooh Kasi and I Never Pushed My Daughter by Tom C. Hunley and The Armrest by Terry Jude Miller and Kind of Poet by Tony Gloeggler and The Lull of Tuesdays by Krystle Herdy on Rattle, The Miracle and Instructions for Myself and Consider the Dandelion by Julie Barton, Accepting the Risk by James Crews (as much as I adore James’s poetry, I absolutely love how with each poem, he shares the backstory and a related prompt), The Waiting “for everyone who’s waiting for something” by Jena Schwartz, A Place for Everything by Maya Stein, and 12 New Recommended Poetry Collections by Orion Magazine Staff.

2. Good stuff from Patti Digh: I would rather live with failure than with regrets (“There is a particular kind of knowledge you only get on the other side of action”) and I read books the way some people start fires (“In praise of generally arguing with books”).

3. To Get Happier, Make Yourself Smaller. “Self-esteem is overrated. The better path to enlightenment is through contemplating one’s insignificance.”

4. Wisdom from Meghan O’Rourke: “When you lose someone you were close to, you have to reassess your picture of the world and your place in it. The more your identity was wrapped up with the deceased, the more difficult the loss.” I’ve really been feeling this, having essentially lost three out of four parents in the past 2.5 years.

5. Good stuff from Satya Robyn: This Is Who I Am (“On reading my old diaries & ‘progress not perfection'”) — I really felt this, “What I read shocked me. The themes – from ten, twenty, thirty years ago – were so familiar. I circled the same dilemmas, had the same complaints about myself, had similar insights over and over again,” as I see the same thing when I read through my old journals, and Trying to Tame the Lion of My Phone Addiction (Again) (“And what helps me to be kind to myself”).

6. Good morning, Grief, you shameless bastard. “The Lament of the Middle-Aged Orphan” by Elissa Altman on Poor Man’s Feast. *sigh*

7. What is here? “Bimblings is changing and I need your help” by Josie George. I feel almost every word of this, in particular the way change happens so slowly, so quietly.

8. The definitive study of seed oil and health, an important reminder from Seth Godin.

9. Everything is Just Happening by Laurie Wagner. “And what might we say? I love you, I’m sorry. Which covers a lot, and will often seem inadequate…” 

10. Writing against the rot, “And other difficulties” by jeanette winterson.

11. 1440 Findings on The Novel, “Hours of research by our editors, distilled into minutes of clarity.”

12. Woman who never stopped updating her lost dog’s chip reunites with him after 11 years.

13. Were We This Brave at 17? “A high school open mic—and Hrishikesh Hirway on change” on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad.

14. If we avoid sadness in life, why do we seek it in art? “Philosophers and psychologists have puzzled over the allure of tragic art. New findings show how sadness can be a comfort.”

15. Strangers answer a mysterious red telephone on a bridge. “The project, called ‘A View from a Bridge,’ launched in 2023 and saw Bloom place old-fashioned handset telephones on random bridges in London. When strangers would pass by and if they picked up, he’d be on the other end ready to chat.”

16. “Soft Socializing” Is the Gen Z Trend That’s Making Low-Pressure Hangouts the New Normal. “Think cozy hangs, early nights, and no pressure to drink.”

17. What Do Authoritarians Fear Most? People Who Stick Up for Each Other. “The most reliable form of resilience is not individual wealth or distant institutions, but solidarity.”

18. The urgency of temporary things, “Not all urgency comes from fear” by Jasmine on The Tiny Joy Project.

19. Always in crisis mode? You might be catastrophizing – here’s how to stop on The Guardian. “When your boss asks to meet, do you assume you’re about to get fired? Experts explain this common pattern.”

In related news, other good stuff on The Guardian: ‘They’re all junk, and should be banned’: the trouble with at-home food intolerance tests (“A multimillion-pound industry has sprung up promising it can detect sensitivities to certain ingredients with a simple remote finger prick test. But the results can be misleading – and even dangerous”) and Socialising, work, exercise: what makes a good day and is there a ‘formula’ for making it better? (“Researchers have figured out which activities, and in what volume, are linked to people reporting having a good day. We challenge three writers to follow the blueprint for improving their daily grind”) and Art, sex, nature: why is everything sold to us as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself? (“How a reductive worldview is stripping meaning from our most valued activities”) and Start small, grow what you like and be realistic: how to start a vegetable garden (“You don’t need a yard or balcony to get going. We asked experts for their advice on how to grow your food”).

20. Calling from the Slopes, “United in our descent” by Kent Kosack on Short Reads.

21. Movievia. “If you are struggling with what to watch, Movievia is your ultimate solution. Instead of endless scrolling, our smart Movie Generator instantly finds the best similar movies and TV shows based on your exact psychological mood (like Adrenaline, Tension, or Feel-Good).”

22. And a few random things I saved to my phone this week.