“I need a phone call, I need a raincoat…”

“I love a rainy night,” Walahfrid Strabo mused in A.D. 838 in a verse epistle to his friend Gottschalk. “It’s such a beautiful sight: I love to feel the rain on my face, taste the rain on my lips in the moonlight shadow.” Here in D.C., we’re too weary of rain to share Walahfrid’s glee—but in with the bluster come bright, blooming links.

Anecdotal Evidence chats up a neighbor with “nothing to think, and little to say.”

First Known When Lost goes home across the shires with a poem by W.S. Graham.

Life is better than art, but Hats & Rabbits knows we tell ourselves otherwise.

Cynthia Haven considers the “bland endeavor” of National Poetry Month.

Dame Eleanor Hull ponders introversion, professorhood, and bonding with students.

Lingwë reads reactions to “Goblin Feet,” an early Tolkien poem.

The Silver Key notes fantasy-based befuddlement from critics who don’t know the genre.

Julie K. Rose posts a beautiful painting: Girl Reading by Peter Vilhelm Ilsted.

Open Letters Monthly has books you can walk on or sleep in.

Dame Nora plays The Sims Medieval.

Jesse Freedman likes the academic novel Stoner.

Ferule and Fescue asks why there isn’t more Protestantism on American television.

Bill Blackbeard, comic-strip archivist extraordinaire, has died.

Ephemeral New York notes the photography of Saul Leiter.

If you’re into royal weddings, the World of Royalty blog is all over it.

Lost Fort visits Norway, with characteristically lovely photos.

As a Linguist remembers expat life in Istanbul.

If you’ve visited Iceland, you’ll recognize the view from this Reykjavik webcam.