April is National Poetry Month, and we called Open Books: A Poem Emporium in Wallingford to hear what poetry titles by Northwest authors have been flying off the shelves this season. Why Open Books? Get this: Not only is it the sole all-poetry bookstore in Seattle, it’s one of just four poetry-only bookstores in the entire U.S.

Billie Swift is Open Books’ owner — and a poet herself. Ten thousand titles are hanging out in her 500-square-foot shop, and these, in no particular order, are the ones she told us Seattle’s poetry community is scooping up the fastest:

» This Glittering Republic by Quenton Baker
» A Song of Dismantling by Fernando Perez
» The Empty Season by Catherine Bresner
» Water & Salt by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
» Mary’s Dust by Melinda Mueller (published by local press Entre Ríos Books)
» Ram Hands by Ellen Welcker (published by NW press Scablands Books)
» Book of Exodus by Kathryn Smith (published by NW press Scablands Books)
» (v.) by Anastacia-Renée Tolbert (published by local press Gramma Poetry) — Psst! Anastacia-Renee is Seattle’s civic poet.
» Killing Marías by Claudia Castro Luna (published by local press Two Sylvias Press) — Psst! Claudia is Washington’s poet laureate

Thanks to everyone who recommended we chat with Open Books and shared out other awesome poetry resources in the city. If you read one of these, let us know what you think. 📚

This is useful. There are lists of the city’s best restaurants, hottest restaurants, newest restaurants, top restaurants for pizza/burgers/seafood/poke, you name it. But as soon as we read this list, we knew it was somehow more handy than all of them: “Where to go when you don’t want to make a big deal about your birthday, but you actually kinda do.” (The Infatuation Seattle)

In defense of cars. Our city government has made a calculation. If they let developers build new apartments without having to also build more parking spots for those apartments, then 1) more housing gets built in a city that desperately needs it, 2) fewer cars choke up Seattle’s roads, 3) more people ride the bus, and 4) we grow in the smartest way we can. But not everyone agrees — particularly on that last point. To people and business owners who live in neighborhoods where cars are the norm and transit just isn’t, the city’s got something backwards. “You create a transit system where people find they don’t need their cars,” Alice Poggi of Phinney Ridge told Crosscut’s Kristen M. Clark. “That’s what you do first.” (Crosscut)

Still the hottest. Seattle’s home prices have been climbing faster than anywhere else in the country for 18 months straight, y’all. Could we be the nation’s hottest housing market for a full two years? Seems possible. (GeekWire)

On a related note… here’s a company that’s been cutting Seattle homes off their foundations so they can move someplace where they’re less likely to be torn down to make room for something bigger. 🙂 Thanks for the tip on that, Traca Savadogo! (California Today)

Shrill the show? Seattle’s Lindy West was a culture writer for The Stranger before she got her uber-popular New York Times column and wrote her best-selling book Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman. Now, Shrill is getting turned into a series on Hulu by SNL’s Lorne Michaels and Aidy Bryant. Damn. 🔥 (Jezebel)

IT’S SIZZLIN’ 😎

Enjoy those July-high temps out there, all.

— The Evergrey