𝑜𝑛 𝑆𝑇𝑅𝐼𝐷𝐸

The past is the past and it’s here to stay…
—Nick Cave

And in the nights the heavy Earth, too, falls 
From out the stars into the Solitude...
—Rainer Maria Rilke

If our separation is illusion Good Subscriber, then our grieving is a dream. I believe that loss is finite perhaps because I have to—in order that I might continue to take the boons and move along the further gift of this life. I’ve been hit with it, the blues, it’s true, but this time, down at the bottom, there was a wisdom and knowing that all that is to come will be so gorgeously liberating, if not terrifying, and I’ll be on my way.

STRIDE ran and I had 42 copies of them in the mail before Christmas Eve. TO A DOG I MET IN CALABRIA was warm off the presses and on its way to 28 of Will Stenberg’s readers just after noon the next day. All is well except the seasonal deluge of blues and hard grief that has mostly been my experience with the holiday. With every collection of poetry I am better and certainly different somehow but the green volume of STRIDE seems to luminesce from some deliberate corner of my psyche. The collection was intended as a celebration, opening however mournfully with PAGAN NEW YEAR, but soon moving into the undeniable ease and reclamation of spring. I hit a wall though, like I do, and STRIDE soon turned into a gritty and often dark song of resolve. 

Heartbreak is a constant state and if we can come to it in the spirit of breaking open then the medicine of loss and solitude and even love become spectral, worth remembering and going through. The lilting romance-for-other that seeps and sinks through the collection is no accident. Your writer met on the short pier of isolation another to look up with at the twinkling, dead light of stars together. And of course soon, too, the room ain’t it. That all expanse of self will one day find itself in a room, its constricted space looming large as law, is the truth of us. We will have to rival our loneliness and that is the true gait of our stride. We should stride and strive toward a wholeness with our pain, contain all who’ve come and are here today so that they who’re coming might have us to urge them on or only sit silently by.

The business of writing is so strange. Not because it’s any different a commerce but because it is the same. You should know that your purchase is an honoring, that each sale affirms this highwire of road, that I’m a writer because you read me and we accept that the pages, collected and literally turning, are a testament to what was; and by letting go we honor the change. We let it change us. The spirit will never die. We’ll go on through our losses and be buoyed by our gain. The business of writing can seem so crass when dealing in transformative matter but my point is that publishing and the creation of a real thing in time and space is the truest magic, real change and everything-we-want-to-be manifest. 

I don’t need to worry when I tell you my latest collection is wedged deep in the crease of my heart. The beat of loneliness and meek brilliance of tiny, incremental victory that is overcoming. The punishing existential reminders and heavy toll of solitude in the collection assert that even in overcoming we’ve had to humble ourselves to our pain, make peace with the zero sum of our dreams of love and still birth forth, hit the city with every bit of good feeling and spite we’ve ever had, greet the long, adversarial night gladly, rosary swords diamond-sharp in the cut, breastplate knotted and doubled back, our hearts beating against the seam, tucking in and bounding up again.
—Patreon, 12/27/21

𝑆𝑇𝑅𝐼𝐷𝐸, 𝐽𝐼𝑀 𝑇𝑅𝐴𝐼𝑁𝐸𝑅’𝑆 8𝑇𝐻 𝐹𝑈𝐿𝐿-𝐿𝐸𝑁𝐺𝑇𝐻 𝐶𝑂𝐿𝐿𝐸𝐶𝑇𝐼𝑂𝑁 𝑂𝐹 𝑃𝑂𝐸𝑇𝑅𝑌, 𝑁𝑂𝑊 𝐴𝑉𝐴𝐼𝐿𝐴𝐵𝐿𝐸 𝐴𝑇 𝐽𝐼𝑀𝑇𝑅𝐴𝐼𝑁𝐸𝑅.𝑁𝐸𝑇

Poet, publisher and performer Jim Trainer will not be releasing his 8th collection of poetry, STRIDE (Yellow Lark Press) with a reading featuring luminaries of the Austin spoken word scene. Copies of STRIDE will be available however, along with a limited edition and letterpressed broadside of his poem “RECURRENT.” Trainer will bring his Standup Tragedy™ to Austin at a historic Governor’s mansion and living museum on September 22. 

with
Tiffany Dansby
Spencer Mirabal
and 
Joe Brundidge
7-9:30 P.M. CDT
$15 with ticket/$20 at the door.
For tickets:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/not-a-book-release-tickets-373938027707

Patrons get in for free!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, The Unofficial Release of Jim Trainer’s STRIDE

Jim Trainer, Poet

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Jim Trainer

Phone: 512-203-6288

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

9/22/22

NOT A BOOK RELEASE-AN EVENING OF POETRY AND THE SPOKEN WORD WITH JIM TRAINER-ON SEPTEMBER 22 AT THE DEAD CONFEDERATE

Poet, publisher and performer Jim Trainer will not be releasing his 8th collection of poetry, STRIDE (Yellow Lark Press) with a reading featuring luminaries of the Austin spoken word community.  Copies of STRIDE will be available however, along with a limited edition and letterpressed broadside of his poem “RECURRENT” (shared below).  Trainer will bring his Standup Tragedy™ to Austin at a historic Governor’s mansion on September 22.  But it’s not a book release.

“Fuck it.”  Trainer says, instead of putting on the perfect send up for his latest collection.
“Me and my friends are gonna tell it, in an old Confederate mansion that’s been taken over by a yankee.”  The informal gathering will take place at Confederate Governor Joe Sayers old place—a 118-year-old building converted into a living museum in downtown Austin.   

Trainer will be joined by poet preacher Joe Brundidge (Lit City), culture commentator Spencer Mirabal (Murder We Watched) and matron mama Tiffany Dansby (A Poet We Know) for a show consisting of poetry, storytelling and dark humor.

“It’s not about the ha-has,” Trainer says of his Stand Up Tragedy “but sometimes all you can do is laugh.”  As a personal journalist at Going For the Throat and Into The Void magazine Trainer has spent over a decade chronicling the inner life of a creative, and documenting the travails of a shift worker and “romantic nihilist” trying to “stay in walls” and continue writing in peace.  His storytelling is a “least factual, most accurate” account of an artist trying to make it in the end of times. 

He’s released collections of his street poetry every year since 2015 through Yellow Lark Press.  His matter of fact delivery sounds unrehearsed with turns of phrase and tips of the hat to plain-spoken poets Philip Levine, Charles Bukowski and Billy Collins. 

Join Jim Trainer in not celebrating the release of STRIDE, his 8th collection of poetry, at The Dead Confederate on September 22 at 7P.M. CST.

For tickets:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/not-a-book-release-tickets-373938027707

For more information:
Jim Trainer
512-203-6288
jamesmichaeltrainer@gmail.com

#

Word Count = 325

Jim Trainer is a poet, publisher, writer and performer.  He has blogged weekly at Going For the Throat for over a decade, penned a monthly column at Into The Void and contributes to Music, Movies&Hoops.  As a proponent of personal journalism Trainer reports on the inner life while writing about recovery, mental health and the creative process.  Trainer publishes one collection of poetry, and sometimes prose, every year through Yellow Lark Press.  STRIDE is his 8th.  Trainer is the progenitor of Stand Up Tragedy™ and performs regularly throughout the world.

Joe Brundidge is an author, host, teaching artist and public speaker living in Austin, Texas. He has hosted a number of open mic events for almost 20 years, including Spoken & Heard at Kick Butt Coffee, an event he curated from 2007-2017. He also served as the Director of the Austin International Poetry Festival from 2012-2015, and was a co-host of “Writing On The Air” Wednesdays from 6p-7p on KOOP 91.7fm. His most recent book ELEMENT 615 was published by Lit City Press in 2017.

Spencer Mirabal is a poet and podcaster based in Austin, TX. You can read his poems in SWEET SAD SANDAL BOY,  his debut chapbook published by Lit City Press, and NOT NICE + NECESSARY BEEF POEMS, his digital-only, Instagram-exclusive chapbook. You can listen to him as co-host of the comedy podcast MURDER, WE WATCHED on Spotify.

Tiffany Dansby published  her first book of poetry, SOUL • FED • EROTICA, in August 2021 by hand, making two hundred copies at her family’s kitchen table.  She’s the sole owner and author of her publishing shop, A POET WE KNOW, and performs with Red Light Lit.  

Jim Trainer
512-203-6288
jamesmichaeltrainer@gmail.com

PHOTOS
-attached
WRITING SAMPLE
-pasted below 

RECURRENT, a poem

bring your pain
soak it like rags
in kerosene
stand blade-thin 
like a rudder in the laughing wind 
whisper to the dead
stay buried or come along
drive along a speeding train
listening to Talking New York Blues 
and smoking
run like a lost dog
through the wilds of your solitude
don’t do anything except acknowledge
a memory
keep 4 cards
1 face down
in your left pants pocket
at the party
don’t scowl
especially if she’s there
don’t drink or say too much
and get to bed before midnight
wake at dawn
drink strong coffee and cold water
feel regret
and loathing
and anger 
breathe through it
get up
face the sad sun like a God.

SUPPORT JIM TRAINER’S PERSONAL JOURNALISM WITH ACCESS TO LIVE READINGS OF POETRY AND SONGS, 2 POEMS A MONTH, LETTERS AND A WEEKLY COLUMN

JIM TRAINER AT MOVIES, MUSIC&HOOPS

GET YOUR COPY OF STRIDE HERE

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