Outlaws & revolutionaries, crooked cops & patsies, ghost towns and superheroes come out to play in this collection inspired by the Whiskey Rebellion, Wordsworth & Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Lord Byron's Don Juan.

The Whiskey Rebellion

Literature & Fiction

Baldinger, Jason

Crooks, Jerome

Poetry

Six Gallery Press

In The Lady Pittsburgh, Jason Baldinger showcases lyrical virtuosity. His jazzy odes riff on the rebelliousness of such cultural icons as Samuel Gompers & Lady Godiva. Hell, the eponymous Lady Pittsburgh could very well be Lena Horne reincarnated: a lead singer who has a soft spot for “the working man”; her cosmic voice, sending shudders through Urban Renewal’s entourage of petty bourgeois wolves. —Jonathan Moody, author of The Doomy Poems The Lady Pittsburgh is a post-industrial psalm, at once a long-moan blues and a boozy supplication. These poems exist in the overlap between myth and history, and that is where we discover truth, the place where all serious poetry lives. Jason Baldinger has crafted a spiritual history of our times with Pittsburgh as its moral center; a ragged and raging roadtrip to the absolute center where we find our Valhalla is a workingman’s bar lost somewhere in the American rustbelt. —Kris Collins, founder of Low Ghost Press  “The years make things different.” That standout line is representative of one of the major themes in this, Baldinger’s first solo full-length collection. Baldinger is a poet interested in history and people—specific history but also history in general, and specific historical figures but also people in general—and the poems in this collection often concern themselves with time, the passage of time, and the change that passage of time brings... With this book, Baldinger has proven himself to be one of a handful of great younger Pittsburgh poets to emerge in the past decade. —The New Yinzer

The Lady Pittsburgh

Speed and Briscoe Books

The Lower Forty-Eight

Jason Baldinger is a poet hailing from Pittsburgh and 
recently finished a stint as writer in residence at the Osage 
Arts Community. He is co-director of The Bridge Series 
reading series. He’s the author of several books, the most 
recent are This Useless Beauty (Alien Buddha Press), The 
Ugly Side of the Lake (NightBallet Press) written with 
John Dorsey and the chaplet Fumbles Revelations (Grackle 
and Crow) which are available now. The collection 
Fragments of a Rainy Season (Six Gallery Press) and the 
split book with James Benger, Little Fires Hiding (Kung 
Fu Treachery Press) are forthcoming. Recent publications 
include the Low Ghost Anthology Unconditional Surrender, 
The Dope Fiend Daily, Outlaw Poetry, Uppagus, Lilliput 
Review, Rusty Truck, Dirtbag Review, In Between Hangovers, 
Your One Phone Call, Winedrunk Sidewalk, Anti-Heroin 
Chic, Nerve Cowboy Concrete Meat Press, Zombie Logic Press, 
Ramingo’s Porch, Rye Whiskey Review, Red Fez, Mad Swirl, 
Blue Hour Review and Heartland! Poetry of Love, Solidarity 
and Resistance. You can hear Jason read poems on recent 
and forthcoming releases by Theremonster and Sub Pop 
Recording artist The Gotobeds as well as at jasonbaldinger.
bandcamp.com

The Better Angels of Our Nature

Kung Fu Treachery Press

Jason Baldinger is from Pittsburgh and misses roaming the country writing poems. His newest book is A Threadbare Universe (Kung Fu Treachery Press). Forthcoming books include The Afterlife is a Hangover (Stubborn Mule Press) and A History of Backroads Misplaced (Kung Fu Treachery). His work has been published widely across print journals and online. You can hear him read his work on Bandcamp and on lp's by The Gotobeds and Theremonster. Damian Rucci is the author of 5 chapbook of poetry including Corrupt the Youth by Between Shadows Press. His work has been featured across the internet and in print. He is a founding member of the Nu Profits of Poetic Dischord, a beer guzzling bard, and probably banned from your local bar. Shawn Pavey is the author of Talking to Shadows (Main Street Rag Press, 2008), Nobody Steals the Towels From a Motel 6 (Spartan Press, 2015), and Survival Tips for the Pending Apocalypse (2019, Spartan Press) which was 1st runner up for the 2020 Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award. He co-founded The Main Street Rag Literary Journal and served as an Associate Editor. His infrequently updated blog is at www.shawnpavey.com. His books can be purchased from him signed and/or personalized at https: //shawn-pavey-poet.square.site/ or wherever one prefers to buy books online). Nathanael William Stolte hails from Buffalo, NY where he spent the pandemic taking shelter in his mother's basement convalescing from a summer heart attack. He did not spend that time wisely. His poems have appeared in various digital and print journals and magazines. He is the author of several chapbooks and Shoot the Alligators Closest to the Boat (Stubborn Mule, 2019) & Beggar's Songbook (Spartan Press, 2020). Stolte is a sober alcoholic, flower-punk, madcap poet. He replies to emails at nathanaelstolte@yahoo.com

And Even if We Did, So What!?

Rucci, Damian

Pavey, Shawn

Osage Arts Community Books

"In this collection of poems about temporary jobs, weak bosses, poor pay, and false choices, Jason Baldinger shows himself as a skilled poet of collapsible dreams. He is the ghost brother of David Lerner, another poet of bad luck litanies and fall down finesse. Baldinger offers his Pittsburgh heart, his verbal artistry, and his expansive presence. He offers characters who stubbornly keep driving even when there is no road ahead." -Mike James, author of Jumping Drawbridges in Technicolor "Jason Baldinger's poetry is an artifact of a life richly lived with a keen awareness of the intersection of history, individual dreams, and an American realism of a country finally willing to assess itself seriously. Baldinger's America is one built on the backs of the labor of others, one where the payments only cover the interest and never touch the principal, and one where the class struggles of our grandparents are eternally present if you know where to look. The book you are holding in your hands is a new vision of Kerouac's dream of the recording angel." -Matt Ussia, author of The Red Glass Cat "In A History of Backroads Misplaced Jason Baldinger demonstrates his limitless wonder and unyielding weariness with our world almost immediately and the further you travel with him through these selected poems, the more you see how he intricately crosshatches the valleyed expanse between rugged and tender, how he reveals the vulnerable crick in his neck, how he fans out every shade of grey like a riverboat gambler throwing down a full house to the dismay of the rubes sitting at the table with him. " -Steve Brightman, author of The Circus of his Bones "In this gritty, neo-beat-spiritual collection, the poet is searching and scavenging for answers-is heaven really on the other side of the bar, is God's image found in the toilet water vomit reflection, how many hymns does it take? Whatever the answer, listen to the big voice (that resembles your mother's) behind these poems: go home, clean yourself up, and saunter along again under the big blue sky tomorrow." -Linzi Garcia, author of Thank You "In a history of backroads misplaced Jason Baldinger takes us on journeys along the backroads and highways ofAmerica, as well as deep within his hometown of Pittsburgh. Spending time in neighborhood bars, diners, and shit jobs, Baldinger doesn't just pass through a place, he inhabits it in a way few travelers do with language both precise andrelaxed. It is a gift he shares with us in this generous volume." -M. J. Arcangelini, author of A Quiet Ghost

A history of backroads misplaced (selected poems 2010-2020)

"The latest collaboration between Jason Baldinger and James Benger hits like perfect rock n' roll poetry dedicated to every bar regular who never thought anything of their thoughts and instead decided to light a cigarette. With images of winters too cold for human empathy and midwestern frustrations brought on because nothing wants to go right, Baldinger and Benger's latest is an excellent portrait of poetic working-class Americana. A fiery Whitman-esque yawp not meant for literary luminaries but for those who don't know how to define the fire within themselves."\n-Daniel W. Wright, author of Love Letters from the Underground\n"In This Still Life, Jason Baldinger & James Benger return for a third masterful collaboration with Baldinger sending out his calls like a lone bird in the Rust Belt, waiting for Benger's answer in the Midwest. Two unique voices studying this span where "we only live a handful of days", finding the beauty in struggle & loss through fine-tuned lenses as time & place are travelled, observed, & recorded for any who come across this collection of musings in the future. "All this is temporary", so let's make our way to the stream or ocean & enjoy this moment before we resurface."\n-Tim Heerdink, author of Somniloquy & Trauma in the Knottseau Well\n"Whether they're set in a factory, or thrift store, a woods or city sidewalk, the poems in This Still Life illustrate two simultaneous accounts of life in this USA. The poems converse and converge, often in cars or riverbanks-Benger: rivers flow in the unblemished sky/a sky that if you squint/and try real hard/will tell you/sweet air is still out there/just not here. Baldinger: I see a burial party/come to cover you in mud/while that rain brown river/never dredged safe/rages in a concrete bed. The poems here recount life's moments-ball games, nights out, car rides-as if ceremonial, the everyday made holy by virtue of attentiveness. Baldinger: this is the midwest/every road is a candlelit hex/every road is a crossroad drugstore/every road is a tattooed waitress/sleevedin an abandoned gas station. Benger: he thinks of the walnuts on grandpa's farm/how clean and pure they tasted/how precise/how delicate the procedure/of removing flesh from shell/how it never rained/or if it did/it wouldn't last." The world that Baldinger and Benger paint together is a world of reverence and nostalgia, of loyalty and reminiscence, where their eager brushstrokes of right now are forever water-colored with a mist of what once was."\n-Kerry Trautman, author of Artifacts and To Be Nonchalantly Alive\n﻿"In This Still Life, Jason Baldinger and James Benger offer keen observations and reflections about struggle, nostalgia, and monotony as they take us through the junk pile of a collapsed world. This bold and effortless collaboration sheds a light on those picking through the pile, trying to make some sort of life from the rubble."\n-Cord Moreski, Author of The News Around Town, Host of The Couch Poets Collective

This Still Life

Benger, James

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