{"id":1623,"date":"2009-04-05T00:17:04","date_gmt":"2009-04-05T06:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1623"},"modified":"2009-04-05T00:17:33","modified_gmt":"2009-04-05T06:17:33","slug":"7-imps-7-kicks-109-featuring-a-small-crowd-to-help-us-welcome-national-poetry-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1623","title":{"rendered":"7-Imp’s 7 Kicks #109: Featuring a Small Crowd to Help Us Welcome National Poetry Month"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Jules:<\/strong><\/font> Today is full of specialness. <\/p>\n

Know how on the first Sunday of each month, 7-Imp usually features a student illustrator or an illustrator otherwise new to the field? Well, not today. We’re gonna shake things up this morning and celebrate National Poetry Month<\/strong><\/a> with a handful of visiting poets, as well as a bit of art. (OF COURSE. Gotta have art.) In fact, featured here is Julie Paschkis’<\/strong><\/a> poetry-month poster, which you may have also seen at Jama’s wonderful blog this week<\/strong><\/a>. (And that’s because Jama and I are sometimes psychic brain twins.) Many thanks to Julie for sharing. If you missed her interview, posted about this time last year, by all means, go have a look<\/strong><\/a>. Her art makes me very happy. <\/p>\n

And who are our visiting poets today, who are going to share some never-seen-before poetry here to help us celebrate a month of poems, poems, and more poems? Well, they are Douglas Florian<\/strong><\/a> (who will be stopping by this week for a breakfast interview), Sara Lewis Holmes<\/strong><\/a>, Julie Larios<\/strong><\/a> (whose new poem is featured above), Kelly Fineman<\/strong><\/a>, Elaine Magliaro<\/strong><\/a>, and Adam Rex<\/strong><\/a>. Let’s get right to it, and I thank them for celebrating with us this week, especially since several of these poems were written specifically for today’s celebration. <\/p>\n

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And here, from Adam Rex<\/strong><\/a>, we have a (love) poem, rendered in paints: Pictures of Adam’s wife as the dawn and as the North Star:<\/p>\n


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Big thanks again to all the participating poets and artists!<\/p>\n

* * * * * * *<\/center><\/p>\n

As a reminder, our 7-kicks are our weekly meeting ground for taking some time to reflect on Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week, whether book-related or not, that happened to you. So, let’s kick it up. Absolutely anyone is welcome to list kicks — even if, or especially<\/em> if, you’ve never done so before.<\/p>\n

* * * eisha’s kicks * * *<\/strong><\/font><\/center><\/p>\n

I thought Tony was so cute back in the day.<\/a>1* Well, all that lovely poetry, and Adam’s art. What a nice Poetry Month kick-off.<\/p>\n

2* Our Strunk & White The Elements of Style<\/em> exhibit<\/strong><\/a> is due to go up Monday. This should be cause for concern, but I think we’re actually almost ready.<\/p>\n

3* Part of the reason for our readiness is that I’ve finally gotten over my fear of the paper cutter in the exhibit prep room. You may scoff, but you haven’t seen this thing. It’s incredibly old, like, it should be IN an exhibit instead of something we use every day. And it’s huge, and all heavy wood-and-wrought-iron, and has this huge guillotine-like blade, and it has workman’s comp written all over it. I tried to find a picture of something like it, and this<\/strong><\/a> is the closest I could find. Anyway, I’m a total ninja with that thing now.<\/p>\n

4* I went to the Teen Book Festival<\/strong><\/a> in Rochester this Saturday.<\/p>\n

5* Know who was there? Robin Brande<\/strong><\/a>. That was the highlight – getting to see her again. But there were tons of great authors there<\/strong><\/a>, too many to name.<\/p>\n

6* And I got to hang out with Adrienne<\/strong><\/a> ALL DAY!<\/p>\n

7* And now (Sat. night) I’m at her house watching the original Escape to Witch Mountain<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. It’s like a sleepover! In fact, I’m pretty sure I already went to this sleepover 25 years ago. Ya’ll – I’d totally forgotten about the scene with those creepy marionettes. Yiggedy!<\/p>\n

* * * Jules’ kicks * * *<\/strong><\/font><\/center><\/p>\n

1). First and foremost: Tornadoes ripped through middle Tennessee this week and one of those bastards touched down very near my husband’s place of employment and in fact a meteorologist reported one touch-down in such a way that made it seem as if his building had been hit and I nearly had a heart attack but he’s okay and so is everyone else and now this one-breath cyclone of a run-on sentence is over. <\/p>\n

2). Remember my kick from last week about how said husband had purchased me an early birthday gift that he said would make me squeal and he was so excited about me seeing it, as we waited for it to arrive in the mail, that he was walking around doing the gloat-y “I know something you don’t know” song, complete with a dance routine? He even showed up later in the week last week and added his own kicks: “1). I 2). Know 3). Something 4). You 5). Do 6). Not 7). Know…”<\/p>\n

Well, the gift arrived and I opened it, and it’s a really nice CAMERA, because I’ve been saying lately that I really want to get a kick-ass camera one day and learn more about photography. Is that a kick or WHAT? <\/p>\n

Here I am with the new camera. (It’s a Nikon D40 6.1MP digital SLR camera.) Yes, this is how you’ll see me from now on, with camera in hand and looking through a lens. For serious, I’ve been taking pictures of EVERYTHING and really FAST, just ’cause I CAN. I’m just a wee<\/em> bit excited about this. I’m totally aware of how much I have to learn—about both the camera itself and photography—but for now I’m still simply giddy. <\/p>\n

I even made some art after taking a photo of my oldest. This is my contribution to National Poetry Month. This line of poetry comes from a Rainer Maria Rilke<\/strong><\/a> poem. It’s a love poem (as in, romantic), but I wanted to use the line anyway, as I played around like a big geek with my photo.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

3). My husband planted bunches of flowers for all of us, but particularly for the oldest, pictured above, who saw one of those Scholastic video adaptations of this book<\/strong><\/a> and has been walking around singing about flowers for weeks<\/em>. Hey, here’s a picture of some of the flowers that I took WITH MY NEW CAMERA! I’m way past getting on your nerves already, right? <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Sam4). and 5). Good music this week: Sam Phillips<\/strong><\/a> released a brand-new song for free at her site, and it’s crazy-good. Also: When I interviewed D.B. Johnson last week<\/strong><\/a>, I think I squealed when I initially read his interview responses and saw that he is a fan of The Innocence Mission<\/strong><\/a>, a band whose music I ADORE beyond all adoring. As I linked to their site in his interview, I saw that there’s an EP for sale which I had not known about<\/em> (how I missed this is a mystery to me, as I’m a rabid fan) and which won’t be available much longer, so I ordered it immediately and it came this week. It is very good. “We Wake Up in the Earliest Blue of All” is sublime, and I could listen to Karen Peris<\/strong><\/a> play piano all. day. long. <\/p>\n

6). Funniest April Fools Day Joke Ever<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

7). Last but far from least: Today’s poetry and art. <\/p>\n

What are YOUR<\/font> kicks this week? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jules: Today is full of specialness. Know how on the first Sunday of each month, 7-Imp usually features a student illustrator or an illustrator otherwise new to the field? Well, not today. We’re gonna shake things up this morning and celebrate National Poetry Month with a handful of visiting poets, as well as a bit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seven-good-things-before-monday","category-poetry-friday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}