“With a fierce and deft yearning, Kim Trainor’s exquisite work returns with the evocative incantation that is A thin fire runs through me. These poems sensuously entwine human connection with grief, amid hopeful, verdant longing. Reading this propulsive book is to feel anointed, a guest of honor in an orphic space, with Trainor as your visionary guide in a complex and gorgeous terrain.” — Jennifer Lovegrove, author of Beautiful Children with Pet Foxes
“Everything happens at once in Kim Trainor’s A thin fire runs through me — the headline and the garden, the I Ching and the Song of Songs, stripping away and piling on, worry and grief and desire. With the steadiness of a daily spiritual practice, the short sections gather and explore, and what accrues is a powerful, transformative sensitivity that both haunts and inspires.” — Adam Sol, author of Broken Dawn Blessings
“Scattered lament stalled in depression, seared anew with love’s joy, Trainor contends with the fierceness of constant change. Now the I Ching says of A thin fire runs through me: 49. Ko/ Revolution (Molting) becoming 58. Tui/The Joyous, Lake.” — Jane Munro, author of False Creek
“With deft precision in form and content, Trainor has crafted a delicate, determined force. An unabashedly political text of and for this time, every line in the book hums with erotic reflection, ecological mourning, contemplative loss, and unfaltering resilience. Behold the sharpest of sparks, sure to ignite.” — Sarah de Leeuw, author of Lot
“Trainor’s use of I Ching, is appealingly enigmatic. Whether text or tea leaves, divination evokes life’s unknowability and the constancy of change. Further, its personal usefulness to the heartbroken and bereaved (and then revitalized) speaker suggests a quintessential human trait — the desire to know outcomes, the quest for order, and an urge for a supernatural assist from up high in the cosmos.” — Vancouver Sun
