In a time when there is no greater question than the question of environmental survival, Suzanne Frischkorn’s LIT WINDOWPANE reminds us of the necessity of unadorned and unapologetic praise for the natural world. In language spare and well-keeled, Frischkorn’s poems instill in the reader the kind of “perfect attentiveness” that the poet Alan Shapiro reminds us is required for reading and loving. Here, in these wonderful poems, we see that attentiveness devoted to the frail and meteoric world through a gaze that is both outward and inward.
–James Hoch
In the poem “Freshwater Notecards” Suzanne Frischkorn writes: “I will fly/ in like a bird: not looking/ sideways, not looking/ down, not looking up.” The imagination in these poems is like that; avid and disarming, they take the world head on, seeking beauty. In spare lines, with rich and lucid images, Suzanne Frischkorn sees the world transforming and remaking itself before her gaze. I love the elegant, heartfelt power of these poems.
–Cynthia Huntington
Good citizens beware: Suzanne Frischkorn has let Girl on a Bridge loose on the world and she’s spreading the word about the furies of femininity and the madness of motherhood with its “stone weight of home.” These poems burn holes on the fairy tale pages of domestic fantasy and uncover the treacherous (though more exciting) narratives of those women who dare stray from the path or, at the very least, who celebrate their desires: “What’s more flattering than being wanted by a mouth that waters?” This book of finely-crafted verse holds up its poetry like a lovely razor blade.
–Rigoberto González
Suzanne Frischkorn is a fierce and fearless poet. In Girl on a Bridge, she first upends our dainty notions of girlhood and then leads us into the wilderness of violence, madness, fear, and love — and does so with beauty and tenderness.
–Julianna Baggott
Suzanne Frischkorn’s poems are brisk and compelling. She writes as to a friend, or a stranger who might become a friend. The poems are extremely visual; the language is select and elegant, in the natural way a letter might reach elegance. The poem called Still Water begins “I want to tell you…”–a clear desire not only to express but to communicate. The poems are not home-spun by any means but exact, and exactly right, even at times beatific, so that we see what she sees as she sees it, which is pretty much, isn’t it, the poem’s intended accomplishment?
—Mary Oliver, Juror From the introduction to Spring Tide, winner of the 2004 Aldrich Poetry Award.
Eloquent, honest, Red Paper Flower, resonates with intelligence. Suzanne Frischkorn’s poems have a remarkable range of tone, they can be witty, tender, abrasive, but are always lucid, and tirelessly push beyond the surface of their subject matter. What I admire in this book is how each detail carries its emotional accuracy–what I love in these poems is their drive and pulse.
—Laure-Anne Bosselaar
The first chapbook in MiPOesias Cuban American Poetry Series. An earlier version of American Flamingo was named a finalist for the Philbrick Poetry Award.
Exhale, (Scandinavian Obliterati Press, 2000)
In poems sharp and honed as a stiletto, Suzanne Frischkorn creates out of rage and grief a world through which she saves herself. The book testifies to the resilience of the human spirit and it’s ability to love. The poems are clear, brilliant, and powerfully moving.
–Maria Mazziotti Gillan
Suzanne Frischkorn 