Poetry Archives - Trisha Sugarek, Author, Playwright & Poet

Radiant Verses ~ An anthology ~~ Book Review

5 out of 5 stars ~~ BOOK REVIEW

This newly released anthology celebrates exquisite poetry by poets from around the globe. Compiled by the editors at PoetrySoup.com, the collection features, Free Verse, Rhymes, Sonnets, Haiku, and lovely ‘little’ stories (Prose) .
“…Each verse serves as a beacon of light, illuminating our shared experiences and aspirations and urging us to embrace the brighter side of life…”

The pages are randomly sprinkled with beautiful original illustrations that compliment the stirring and uplifting poems.

This book is a ‘must-have’ addition to your permanent library or a wonderful gift as the holidays approach.

My one and only critique is with regard to formatting. While I do understand the lack of ‘hard’ page breaks for each poem and the desire to feature as many poems as possible, I don’t understand the editors foregoing of the title and author on the spine and the lack of any promo or synopsis on the back cover. Two marketing opportunities missed.

A Writer’s Take ~~ www.writeratplay.com
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A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

Haiku Honored at PoetrySoup.com

Dear Trisha,

Congratulations, this is just a quick notice to let you know that your poem The Blues 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

Link to poetry

9/11 Remembered!

9/11 Memorial 2024 911.3

We haven’t forgotten that day…we, each, know exactly where we were when that terrible thing happened. That horrific thing that we never imagined could happen here. I remember I turned on the TV at about 10 that morning, going to catch up on a little news…at first, I thought I was seeing a trailer for an action movie on the screen. Then I tuned my ears in and realized the disbelieving tone to the journalist’s voice, the horror at what we were all watching across our nation. And then the unbelievable on top of the unimaginable, another plane slammed into the second Tower.

Americans gathered today in NY City, at the Pentagon, D.C., and in Pennsylvania to pay respects to the heroes lost that day.
WE AMERICANS WILL NEVER FORGET!

9/11 Memorial (2014,) I’ve been watching those terrible days on TV, relived, from 9/11/2001. The release of new, sometimes grisly, information about that horrific, bright blue, autumn day when our beloved country was invaded for the first time in our history, (if you don’t count the Brits). Over the years I have written some poetry of my reflections, my heartbreak as I visited ground zero and the firehouses [back in the early days], then observed the almost finished repair a few years back. It’s pretty for a cemetery. The building I’m not so fond of the architecture; for me, it resembles a middle finger thrusting into the same blue sky, daring them to try it again? I don’t know…………so here is my latest offering and a couple from other years on this anniversary of our souls weeping, forever changed.

the forever wound (Haiku)

A deep gaping hole
newly covered with scar flesh
a cemetery

the reflective pond
the bright thirteen year old trees
the lost souls still there

the money-men charge
fees to visit our worst time
Ah, America!

Anniversary 9.11.11

I wait to exhale
will terrorists celebrate
with their big loud bang?

walking among us
to celebrate what they did
murder innocence

today, a grief day
remember a bright, fall day
ten short years ago

Ground Zero 9.11.12

Heartache fills the chest
Terrorists murdered thousands
Pain is fresh and new

Haunts walk the gardens
Four hundred trees, firemen all
the fountain of tears

Green leafed trees stand tall
Names carved never to forget
Red, white, blue flies proud

The question begs: Have we learned anything?
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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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To receive my weekly posts, sign up On the home page. Enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard. May: Victoria Costello. June: Laila Ibrahim, August: Donna Everhart

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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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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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. March-Apr: Joshua Hood, author of ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE RENDITION April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard May: Victoria Costello.

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

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

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BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK