The past is the past and itβs here to stayβ¦
βNick Cave
And in the nights the heavy Earth, too, falls
From out the stars into the Solitude...
βRainer 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 toβin order that I might continue to take the boons and move along the further gift of this life. Iβve been hit with it, the blues, itβs 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 Iβll 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 Stenbergβs 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 ainβt 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 whoβve come and are here today so that they whoβre coming might have us to urge them on or only sit silently by.
The business of writing is so strange. Not because itβs 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 Iβm 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. Weβll 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 donβt 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 weβve 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 weβve 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.
βPatreon, 12/27/21
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 βRECURRENT.β Trainer will bring his Standup Tragedyβ’ to Austin at a historic Governorβs 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!
Going for the Throat 