Thundering on the Pink, a book review by Candice Louisa Daquin
Thundering on the Pink (Kelsay Books) a poetry collection by Trisha Leigh Shufelt
Trisha Leigh Shufelt’s first book published outside her own publishing house, Thundering on the Pink, is a curated tumbleweed of her strongest writing. Her passion for poetry is unparalleled, and it shows, in the attention of form and style with every piece. When discussing grief and regret, she employs layers of meticulous, yet naturalistic imagery to her poetry, that somehow ‘thunder’ into our subconsciousness with their power:
another day
disavows vows by hours (Hymns of Never Again)
Often it is the short phrase that sticks in our heads long after reading, but Shufelt is a dexterous and serious poet, unafraid to try her hand at anything. In her eponymous poem Thundering on the Pink, she tackles through childhood’s evocative lens, the subject of parental rejection and cruelty so deftly it’s breathtaking:
damn your poetry, she says
draining the dredge beneath,
and I think, good,
I am empty now
It is as much what is not said, as what is said, the revealing so subtle you submerge into meaning without knowing how you’ve reached it. This is surely the crux of good writing, whereby the reader isn’t prescription-fed conclusions, but given the space to reach them through a naturalistic journey to the poem’s heart. Meaning is pared down to its simplest descriptor, leaving a sense of memory so palpable, you could swear you were standing next to the child-version of the poet, witness to the indifference and lack of support of her elders:
I am what she wanted
hollow and transparent
abstract and ambiguous
like a slow, dissipating fog.
This collection feels like it was burning to be written for many years but had to wait. Emotion doesn’t leach out in a disorderly way, it’s also not restrained, but a cultivated release that is just enough to understand without drowning. That balance isn’t something easily learned, it takes practice and honing one’s art, which is exactly what Shufelt does so well, without losing the poignancy and power of her writing. It speaks to the losses and absences of a neglectful childhood without a tendency toward self-pity or recrimination. Again, this is a tightrope few can walk so nimbly:
my teeth are daggers
cutting through the once was
coring secret never seeds (Dream Therapy)
Intensely female, rich in images and dreamscapes, whilst retaining the throat of truth throughout, Thundering in the Pink is an artful, well sculpted epochs of a Gen X childhood. In her poem Rabbits on a Roundabout, Shufelt writes:
we were Kramer vs. Kramer kids
cynical and sundered
we were the outside children
the last of the feral, wild
The classic film reference, set against the poetic landscape of wildness, untamed children, whose parents worked long hours and left them to their own devices, conjure up a period in time so powerfully, we stand amidst the latchkey recollections as if they were our own, finding something in each poem to take away. Loneliness and lack of attention is palpably conveyed, throughout this collection, as being part-explanation for how we inherit ourselves, through a grapple of loss and gain, which feels like such an accurate patchworking of development from childhood to adulthood. In the poem Looking Through a Window, Shufelt positions herself thus:
I am a window
outside of myself
looking inward
through a screen
This transfer from human to object, is brilliantly formed, much like Wuthering Heights where Heathcliff imagines the dead Cathy calling to him through the window, there is a sense of imagining looking outside of oneself, with the disturbance of a screen, causing it to be difficult to really look inward, creating distance from understanding it fully, yet despite the “Broken frame” – through determining, she is able to find herself. It is challenging to put oneself into inanimate objects and still retain purpose as a poet, but Shufelt is fearless in her roving of medium and subject, to get her points across. In Letters to Your Scars, it is fascinating how instead of talking of her own scars directly, she talks in the third person:
I’ve hidden secrets
in skin pockets
envelopes of scars
childhood to now
Switching tenses in her address to herself throughout time, forcing her deepest emotions to the surface, even as she admits having kept them hidden for years. The tension here is precise, vulnerable and accessible, enabling any reader to stand aside her and learn as she does, about the way we break and the way we move forward to heal. Ultimately it is this vulnerability that hooks the reader most of all, for its pure intention in laying bare, a lifetime’s worth of lessons. Thundering on the Pink is at once joyful, grief-stained and deeply human, and absolutely the lyric gem of this accomplished poet’s legacy thus far:
we were barefoot
and brave, picking bottle glass
from black, callused heels
pretending everything was magic (Oz).
Candice Louisa Daquin is Associate Editor with Life & Legends, Managing Editor for Lit Fox Books (Austin, TX), Reviews Editor for Austin Poetry Review, and Poetry Editor with Writers Resist and Parcham. Daquin is also Consultant Editor for Raw Earth Ink and co-judge of The Northwind Writing Award. www.candicelouisadaquin.com
