MOVEMENT, was a member of the Umbra work-
shop, which included DAVID HENDERSON. He was
on the editorial staff of Roots, a journal published
by Texas Southern University, where he worked
as a visiting writer. His work is anthologized in
AMIRI BARAKA and LARRY NEAL’s BLACK FIRE (1968),
Chapman’s New Black Voices (1972), and Ward’s
Trouble the Water: 250 Years of African-American
Poetry (1997).
Thomas published six collections of poems:
Chances Are Few (1972), The Bathers (1981), Fit
Music (1972), Dracula (1973), Framing the Sunrise:
Selected Poems (1975), and Dancing on Main Street
(2004). Also, his essays and poetry have been pub-
lished in AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW, Ploughshares
and Popular Music and Society. Often filled with
musical references and metaphors, Thomas’s po-
etry is honest, his language precise, and his voice
direct and even uncompromising. For example,
Thomas is almost didactic in “L’Argent”:
I know you don’t know what
Love is it isn’t
Dagwood kisses on the way to work
It’s going to work....
Love could be but it’s not
A 50/50 partnership. (Furious Flower, 148)
Thomas begins “The Marvelous Land of Indefi-
nitions” with a quotation from Ricardo Miro, “the
poet’s business is telling the truth,” and continues
with a speaker whose purpose is to do just that:
How nice! How convenient!
We have all gathered to read & listen to
poems
As if everyone were actually equal
Laborers in the corn fields...
But poeting with poor people doesn’t end
poverty.
(Chances are Few, 78)His speaker in “Historiography” speaks as if
to set the record straight about the real, not the
mythic, Charlie Parker (Bird). He was not the “god
of good graciousness” as TED JOANS would have
us to believe, Thomas writes. In fact, in real life,
Thomas’s speaker reminds us, Bird was a junkie—
a drug abuser: “Those who loved music made his
memory live / And made the young ones never for-
get Bird / Was a junkie.” (Trouble the Water 429)
Thomas worked with the national Poetry in the
Schools Program and taught American literature
and creative writing at the University of Houston,
Downtown and was a long time contributor to the
HOUSTON CHRONICLE. Thomas died of emphysema
on July 4, 2005.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gabbin, Joanne V., ed. Furious Flower: African Ameri-
can Poetry from the Black Arts Movement to the
Present. Charlottesville: University of Virginia
Press, 2004.
Ward, Jerry W., Jr., ed. Trouble the Water: 250 Years of
African American Poetry. New York: Mentor Book,
1997.
Wilfred D. SamuelsThomas, Trisha R. (1964– )
San Diego–born Trisha R. Thomas attended the
University of Southern California (USC) in Los
Angeles after graduating from Morse High School.
She left USC and returned to San Diego to attend
the University of California at San Diego, where
she was discouraged from pursuing a career in
creative writing. Taking her counselor’s advice to
do whatever she loved doing best, Thomas started
her own business, designing unique painted
clothing. Despite her modest success, Thomas
abandoned her business to continue her educa-
tion. She enrolled at California State University,
Los Angeles, and pursued a degree in marketing,
which she completed in 1989. While assisting her
husband, who was writing his memoir, Thomas,
rediscovered her love for writing. The result
was the publication of her debut novel, Nap-
pily Ever After (2000), with which she began the
story of Venus Johnston, a successful young black
businesswoman.
On the one hand, as the title suggests, Thomas’s
central theme in Nappily Ever After is a ritual mostThomas, Trisha R. 495