Category: Poetry

Poetry.com Honors My Poetry

Dear Trisha,

Congratulations, this is just a quick notice to let you know that your poem Twenty-Five is one of the poems being featured on the PoetrySoup home page this week. 

Thanks again and congratulations.

Sincerely,
PoetrySoup

Twenty-five  by poet, Trisha Sugarek

25 seconds: the time it
takes to fall in love….

25 minutes: into rehearsal
we have our first kiss….

25 hours: I am dreaming of
you….

25 days: I know it is just the
beginning….

25 weeks: we are having
“make up” sex….

25 months: stranded in
Tucson, I’m sling’in hash
and you’re ropin’ steers….

25 years: Best friends, still in
love, comfortable in our
own skins, at ease and
amused by each other’s
quirks.…

….shoring up each other’s
desires, choices, and
judgments, good or bad….

sustaining each other no
matter what…
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A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

   

 

 

Poetry Soup honors Trisha’s poetry

Congratulations, this is a quick notice from us here at Poetry Soup to let you know that your poem Journey Through Life is one of the poems
being featured on the PoetrySoup home page this week.

Journey through Life ©  (Renku)

happiness, the fire
forges our steel to withstand
pain and thorny times

laughter melts metal
cold bath sets the steel mettle
fine blade to cut life

blade wrapped in fine silk
until the next battle comes
pain and blood drip down

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haiku, poetry, pen and ink art, poems, Japanese haiku,

Trisha’s poetry gets a Rave from BookReview.com

Title: Butterflies & Bullets
Author: Trisha Sugarek
Rating:  Must Read!
Publisher: Trisha Sugarek
Reviewed by: Eric Jones, Book Review

I knew Sugarek’s work in the past from her collection of short children’s plays, Ten Minutes to Curtain, which involve the complicated dynamics of growing up. Flannery O’Conner said that if you live through childhood then you have enough material to write forever, and Sugarek has been there and then some. Her short work for the stage has put her in the perfect position to transition from play to poetry with her new book, Butterflies and Bullets.

Even the title denotes the strange duality between innocence and loss, and that theme is prevalent throughout the work. Mostly in free form, Sugarek keeps everything in a minimalist range, lending focus to intimate moments like a man playing his Mandolin beside a fire or the quiet landscape of the Serengeti just before rainfall. These truncated pieces of life feel like literary snapshots. These are Sugarek’s butterfly collection. Then, of course, there are the bullets.

The bullets are also set in free form, however they deal with much more happenings and are more narratively set. My favorite poem is one of these. “Hair Cut… Two Bits” chronicles the return of a barber from war-torn Europe in 1934 via a freighter into the Mississippi from the Gulf. The story, though scarcely a few pages, manages to convey the loss, struggle, and triumph of war given a single, near microscopic, experience. Not to mention that it’s all the more topical today, given the current mess in off the shore of New Orleans.

There are many that are like these, managing to say a lot with only a little and Butterflies and Bullets comes off splendidly. The collection feels complete and utterly whole, no piece of the pie excluded. Such close ups reveal that every place is connected. The ocean, if you look closely enough, looks just like rain on the blistering asphalt of your driveway. Shanty Irish curtains, at a certain scale, are indistinguishable from the sculpted wood of a Native American totem pole. This is the nature of Sugarek’s poetry, that when you pull back you see how different everything is, but when you put it under the microscope, a butterfly is really just a bullet with wings. 
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haiku, poetry, pen and ink art, poems, Japanese haiku,

Serpent and the Cranium, Poetry honored on PoetrySoup.com

Dear Trisha,

Congratulations, this is just a quick notice to let you know that your poem Serpent and the Cranium is one of the poems being featured on the PoetrySoup home page this week. Poems are rotated each day in groups of 14-16 to give each poem an equal opportunity to be displayed.

Thanks again and congratulations.

Sincerely,
PoetrySoup.com

Serpent and the Cranium

Warm smooth coils round
my head
scales tickle my forehead
I want to scratch
quick tongue laps my ear.

The body moves… languid
like water over smooth rock.
Or is the snake inside my head?
Is there only one or many
seething and writhing?

Is the poison real or imaginary?
If I move too fast or think too fast
will it?…..they…strike?
If they strike will my death
be only in my mind?
If not entirely in my head,
will anyone grieve?

 

My Perfect Posey…(poetry)

I found a garden
in it a perfect bloom in the middle of a verdant
sea of green

a sip of rain balanced upon a rosy peach petal
reflecting the flames of sunrise
I stopped to ponder its loveliness

A cold metal thing, all angry voices
and slashing blades
swept by and
murdered my perfect posy
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A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK 

Poem Featured on Home Page of PoetrySoup.com

Dear Trisha,

Congratulations, this is just a quick notice to let you know that your poem The Farm is one of the poems being featured on the PoetrySoup.com home page this week. Poems are rotated each day in groups of 14-16 to give each poem an equal opportunity to be displayed.

Thanks again and congratulations.
Sincerely, PoetrySoup

The Farm ©
by Trisha Sugarek

Fields of mustard seed
as far and beyond the eye
the farm dogs return
dusted in yellow

The clapboard grey of the old
farm house stands in testimony of
generations of pea farmers,
hunters, fishermen, and cooks

Heady fragrance of a farm dinner
immerses the senses as the screen
door slaps open

The matriarchal voice sings out
‘tea party!’ A call to supper

the city folk sit around a battered
and scared wooden table laden with
baked chicken, fried steak, mashed potatoes,

green beans and corn that hung from the
vine just minutes ago

Her biscuits and corn bread are the stuff that
dreams are made of

Later they all sit on the warped porch steps
and listen as the geese honk their way in to
the fields and their nightly time of respite

Bats fly across the moon, frogs call out their
secrets, a loon wails its loneliness

For more poetry:  Click here
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BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

Reading Books!

This was my journey with books except for the frustration part.

Somewhere around #7 “Rediscovering books” I began to seriously write. Stage plays to begin with…then children’s books….

then full length novels and poetry. And then more stage plays. But always reading…reading…reading.  Non-Stop! 

Books take you away…to far off lands, to adventures which you’d probably never have, and
to meet other people from all walks of life. 

Keep reading, keep writing……remember,

Writing isn’t a calling….it’s a doing! 

 

 

 

(acknowledgement: www.grantsnider.com)

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From Samurai Warrior to Haiku Poetry (Nostalgia #14)

As I swiveled around in my office chair I faced the back wall of my office and stared unseeing at a (manually) typed letter from James Clavell dated June, 1971. Clavell being the author of the classic and world renowned, ‘SHOGUN‘. (for you poor pathetic illiterate readers out there who have never read this classic or heard of James Clavell.)  The letter was a response to my asking him for more information on the word ‘joss’ and how it was used in ancient Japan. He responded with my answer and an invitation for us to sail up through the Strait of Juan De Fuca and the Georgia Strait to Vancouver Island and his home.  WOW! 

‘SHOGUN‘ began my love affair with Samurai Japan and the history of ancient Japan.  The Samurai, a military caste in feudal Japan, began as provincial warriors before rising to power in the 12th century with the beginning of the country’s first military dictatorship, known as the shogunate. They continue to rise to great power, known for their superb fighting skills, their unwavering loyalty, and (oddly)  their poetry.  I became a student of this warrior class for over two decades. Searching out and reading their Haiku and Renku writings. 

I was fascinated by the fact that these fierce, bloodied, bigger-than-life warriors who dedicated their lives to their lord and war could, in turn, write delicate, tender poetry. So delicate you felt as though the paper the poetry was written on would crumble if you held it too tightly. So tender your heart wept at the reading.  

One day; I don’t know which day or what prompted me, I wrote my first Haiku. And as they say, the rest is history.  I have written Haiku for over three decades, published three books of poetry. 

It is a wonderful exercise in brevity and translates over to your other writings. Helping you to cut away the excess, the fluff in your writing. And if you write enough of this poetry, the fluff in your writing will never appear in the first place. 

The Garden

I wander my blooms
the morning sun barely peeks
above the far hills
~~Trisha Sugarek

Samurai Song (Renku)
                                                                                                                                                   
delicate blossom                                                                                                                       
rests in the still gnarled hand                                                                                                                              
bruised petals weep tears                                                       

weary eyes open
tiny cuts, the body bleeds
peace still years away

sun rise breaks the hill
heralds another battle
draw your sword and charge
~~Trisha Sugarek

If you want to try writing some Haiku, click here

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Buckle-bunny

Another pair of cowboy boots
beneath my bed
banishing dreams of
a permanent man
right out of my head

They call me a buckle-bunny
but that sets low the bar
for at the end of the night
I take home the rodeo star

He rides wild horses
and even wilder bulls 
I lap him up by the mouthfuls

Lust curls in my belly
when I spy the champion buckle
his laughter is sweet as honeysuckle

An aging buckle-bunny is what I see
until the next cowboy smiles at me
                                                          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With years of practice writing Haiku, Renku (and prose) poetry, I feel as though I have acquired some skill. Because that is what it takes, practice.  The more you do anything the better you become. This my first attempt, ever, at ‘rhyming poetry’.  For two consecutive mornings I had lain in my bed, between that creative space of half-sleep and wakefulness.  The poem swirling around and around until it distilled to this and I had to write it down. (for better or for worse.)

The biggest reason that “rhyming poetry” has fallen out of favor is that it is often forced and unnatural. … To the ear, it will sound more like internal rhyme (but to the eye it will appear as some form of end rhyme). In a good rhyming poem, the reader might not even realize it is rhyming poem (until later).  (Unknown. From the Internet.)      If I accomplished this, dear reader, it was by pure accident. 

The title: A young country-western song writer made up this term and it caught my fancy.  She meant it as a name for the groupies that follow the rodeo and its cowboys.
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A Little Haiku

Flat Busted

broke down in Tucson
flat-busted, him punchin’ cows
and her slingin’ hash

Haiku (c) by Trisha Sugarek ~~  More Haiku

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