Praise for Fly Traps
Flytraps are reader traps. You start and want to know more. Warner is ‘whistling downwind’, and his notes are hanging onto ‘gusts, travelling like light-speed’; there is nowhere Warner won’t go. From ‘geese in flight’ to ‘playing with Ouija Boards’, ‘seated at your deathbed vigil’ and ‘shooting the curve’. Warner takes you on flights of fancy, journeys of imagination and memories. yet remains without ‘permanent address, back to the wind’. Go for it, let him take you to spy on ‘the dancing rabbits’ and enjoy the ride.
—Rose Mary Boehm: Novelist, Poet
JSW’s [Sterling Warner’s] poetry is an embrace of Whitman’s multitudes and exquisite closeups; his mastery of rendering images and character sketches from towns, landscapes, city vibes, gardens—all portraits and simple inviting details that engage the reader with this voice of wonder and curiosity. This poet enables all our worlds and possibilities to collaborate—observations that offer us empathy, compassion and concern.
—Tobey Kaplan: Poet, Educator,Author Across the Great Divide: Selected Poems
The poet’s flights of imagination and landings of observation en-snare and share myriad phenomena, natural and otherwise, past, present, and future. Stay alert!
—Charles A. Perrone: Professor Emeritus University of Florida.
Mesmerizing collection of personal reflections, odes and elegies exploring the human experience and the beauty of the urban and the pastoral as we travel through enchanted woodlands to San Francisco and New York. Brilliant calligrams enhancing the literal and figurative meaning of each poem.
—Sravani Banerjee: Educator, Hodophile, Author
Buddha is here-and the Dalai Lama! Fly with Ravens, Eagles, Geese, Ospreys, Waxwings, within wild winds under Gaia’s Luna. Pilgrimage to Mexicali, Boulder Creek, Ireland, Queens, Montreal, Hood Canal, Amsterdam, Santa Cruz. Meet the panhandlers, skinny dippers, hitchhikers, astrologers, pathfinders, flower children and naked dancers. Experience Coffee and Kodak moments crystallizing in Fibonacci Sequences. Taste the cinnamon and nutmeg. Smell the patchouli! Hear the barn owl, coyote, mantras and madrigals! This is the atomic age with Tibetan trumpets, time travel, snow angels and carmudgeons. Enjoy Flytraps!
—Thom «World Poet» Woodruff: Improvising Bard, Texas Beat Poet Laureate
Once again Sterling Warner strikes gold with Flytraps, another lively and varied collection of poems for every heart and every mind. One of America’s most prolific poets, Warner dazzles with a dizzying display of forms, genres, subjects, settings and emotions. Never disconnected from the rhythms of nature and the vicissitudes of the human spirit, this collection of well-crafted poems, in nine quirky categories, carries the reader from grief and loss with moving elegies for his late mother and sisters to touching tributes to friends and loved ones «we…sang songs out of key unashamed.» Never losing his sense of joy, wonder and the oddities of human life, Warner takes us here, there, and everywhere on this exuberant journey upon the magical wings of words.
—Rose Anna Higashi: English Professor, Poet, Blogger
Flytraps, Sterling’s new collection is artistry in practice. The journey he takes you on transcends elements of thought and time. Many of these poems are poignant and others leave you laughing. Sterling displays his mastery of the craft.
—Jack Campbell, Poet, Spoken Word Artist, General Computer Geek
Sample Poems
Enchanted Woodlands
Tall
proud
mammoth
sequoias
more majestic than
deciduous and conifers;
both bow down to Methuselah, five millennia
master, Great Basin bristlecone
pine magnificence,
defiant
against
time’s
spoils.
Else
where
hungry
opossums
nibble magnolia
buds, ivory flowers tightly
shut, petals softly caressed by early morning dew
waiting like patient Ents for dawn’s
creeping rays warming
opening
tulip
wide
blooms.
In
the
Mirkwood’s
beech and oak
forests, I gaze east
to Lórien’s stately Mallorn,
marvel as their green and silvery leaves turn clear gold
each autumn, cling firm to branches,
shed only come spring
when tree limbs
blossom
fresh
sprouts.
Flowerchild Dementia
Walking down 19th Avenue,
hugging parking meters, Dawn
imagined she’d stepped backwards
in time, returned to Golden Gate Park,
expressing warmth unrequited
mixing with strangers who flocked
at the panhandle to hang with hipsters
or crack open walnuts, feed squirrels
red & grey that scurried across
San Franciscan shoulders searching
for husked kernels & questions with answers
nature’s kabuki theatre in a Japanese Tea Garden.
Between fleeting perceptions, Dawn recalls dancing
like a whirling dervish under shady oak trees,
her freewheeling spirit acts out spectator phantasies;
déjà vu visitors wave, nod, smile, toss coins
in open guitar cases unaware of her street musician
disconnect outside of entertainment magic;
a whiff of patchouli oil or old familiar tunes conjure
her hazy memories—brief glimpses that quickly fade;
still, Dawn embraces her dementia, merges past & present,
allows unannounced touches & soft summer kisses
to pepper masses, confer indiscriminate blessings,
preserve intimate exchanges for phantom dream lovers.
© Sterling Warner
Paperback Only
Author Biography
Author of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, Sterling Warner has several publications. His recent ones include: Visions Across the Americas (8th edition © 2013), and Anthology of World Literature [Until the 17th Century] (6th edition © 2017).
Warner’s poetry and fiction have appeared in many international literary magazines, journals, and anthologies such as Verse Virtual, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry Life and Times, The Fib Review, and MasticadoresUSA.
Warner also has written several volumes of poetry. His most recent ones include Flytraps: Poems (Independent Press © 2022), Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poems & Fiction 2019-2022 (Annas Bay Books 2022), Halcyon Days: Collected Fibonacci (Annas Bay Books © 2023), Abraxas: Poems (Kelsay Books © 2024), Gunilla’s Garden (Annas Bay Books © 2025)—as well as Masques: Flash Fiction &. Short Stories (Independent Press © 2020).
A Jim Herndon Award recipient (2013), a Pushcart Award nominee (2014, 2020, 2021), and a Hayward Award winner (2000), Warner was named the Atherton Poet Laureate in 2014. Warner formerly taught in the English Department at Evergreen Valley College, where he served as the Creative Writing Program Director, EVC Author’s Series Organizer, and Leaf by Leaf literary magazine Chief Editor.
Author Biography
Author of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, Sterling Warner has several publications. His recent ones include: Visions Across the Americas (8th edition © 2013), and Anthology of World Literature [Until the 17th Century] (6th edition © 2017).
Warner’s poetry and fiction have appeared in many international literary magazines, journals, and anthologies such as Verse Virtual, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry Life and Times, The Fib Review, and MasticadoresUSA.
Warner also has written several volumes of poetry. His most recent ones include Flytraps: Poems (Independent Press © 2022), Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poems & Fiction 2019-2022 (Annas Bay Books 2022), Halcyon Days: Collected Fibonacci (Annas Bay Books © 2023), Abraxas: Poems (Kelsay Books © 2024), Gunilla’s Garden (Annas Bay Books © 2025)—as well as Masques: Flash Fiction &. Short Stories (Independent Press © 2020).
A Jim Herndon Award recipient (2013), a Pushcart Award nominee (2014, 2020, 2021), and a Hayward Award winner (2000), Warner was named the Atherton Poet Laureate in 2014. Warner formerly taught in the English Department at Evergreen Valley College, where he served as the Creative Writing Program Director, EVC Author’s Series Organizer, and Leaf by Leaf literary magazine Chief Editor.
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