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REVIEWS - February 2024
Whipsaw
By Suzanne Frischkorn
ISBN: 978-1-934695-84-5
Anhinga Press, 2024
Review by: Judy Ireland
Suzanne Frischkorn’s fourth book of poems, Whipsaw, pulls the reader deep into new and familiar territory. Dual forces are everywhere in these poems. Predators are ever-present, but strength and endurance can answer the danger. The natural world is being destroyed and must be grieved, even as it generates more life and sacred sustenance. The gorgeous sonnets of Frischkorn’s earlier book, Fixed Star, have given way in this new book to a wonderful variety of poetic forms, including one ten-stanza erasure poem that comprises an entire section of the book. “Before the Gods Existed the Woods Were Sacred” includes ten stanzas of six lines each, all filled with reverence for the forest and the language that arises from the natural world. The text Frischkorn chose for her erasure was a 1958 book of architectural philosophy by Gaston Bachelard, whose philosophy has been compared to that of Heidegger in terms of stature. Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space explores how one’s physical environment, especially one’s home, affects humans, their consciousness, and their poetics. In Frischkorn’s poem, there is a real connection between the woods and humans, between our identity and our original home: And with a stroke of the pen I name myself. To be long in the woods we no longer know where we are. A primary attribute to the forest. We feel this in the very structure of our bodies: This delicate Aeolian harp nature has set at the entrance to our breathing. A sixth sense. It quivers to sing. The vowel a, the vowel of immensity. We take infinity into our lungs. We breathe cosmically. The tree knows no bounds. The tree has its being in you. The tree and its dreamer grow tall. The title of the book finds expression in nature as well, especially in a poem titled, “Doe”. It is twilight, and a doe has left the forest and is off-kilter, trying to get her footing so she can flee: she is righting herself – as cars speed past her, speed toward her, in that dangerous time twilight – the refraction & scatter of sunrays when the sun slips below horizon, …. blinded by sun, on the road. Her natural grace abandoned her, she favors her left side, the doe in the midst of righting herself, her eyes on the woods. The fae hold their breath. The speaker of the poem watches as the doe lurches back and forth, whipsawing between danger and escape, seeing the struggle continue in her rearview mirror, but never seeing the outcome. This is not the same circumstance, but it is the same degree of danger faced by the daughter in the first poem in this collection, in “Dear America.” The speaker will make sure the young woman is prepared: It’s time to teach my daughter how to shoot an arrow How to use a knife How to hit the center of a target The beautiful scope of this book makes every poem belong to the whole. There are elegies for a whale calf and for baby chicks in Ohio, alongside verses for women who need freedom despite the danger. Suzanne Frischkorn uses myth and metaphor and the movement of seasons to give us this deeply satisfying volume of poetry. Fixed Star was a hard act to follow, but Whipsaw may be Frischkorn’s best work yet. Whipsaw will be released in April of 2024. |
MICRO REVIEWS
LSU Press has been sending me poetry collections.
I don't write reviews. I don’t write them because I’m lousy at writing them. But I’m taking a crack at it now simply because I want to acknowledge my gratitude to LSU, and because the two collections I’m about tell you about are so worth talking about.
I’ve never heard of either Sally Van Doren or Morri Creech before I received their books: Sibilance by Van Doren, and The Sentence by Creech.
Sibilance is remarkable. Let me steal a blurb from the back cover that says it all. It’s by Rachel Eliza Griffiths--
“Tactile, luminous, and original in voice, Sally Van Doren’s Sibilance is a journey of the body andits elusive ache and the shape of living in the name of life itself.”
I’ve seen blurbs using the word luminous before. But that word for those collections fell short of the mark. They were not “Luminous.” But it certainly is on the money when used for describing Sibilance.
This is an unexpected pleasure. Van Doren’s work is wonderful. I love this book.
For Creech’s The Sentence, I’d use the word stunning. Creech’s control and craft is superb. His use of rhyme, magnificent. Nobody writes formal poetry as well as this. Nobody.
I’m lulled and emblazoned at the same time. I love this book. I LOVE this book.
-Lenny DellaRocca
I don't write reviews. I don’t write them because I’m lousy at writing them. But I’m taking a crack at it now simply because I want to acknowledge my gratitude to LSU, and because the two collections I’m about tell you about are so worth talking about.
I’ve never heard of either Sally Van Doren or Morri Creech before I received their books: Sibilance by Van Doren, and The Sentence by Creech.
Sibilance is remarkable. Let me steal a blurb from the back cover that says it all. It’s by Rachel Eliza Griffiths--
“Tactile, luminous, and original in voice, Sally Van Doren’s Sibilance is a journey of the body andits elusive ache and the shape of living in the name of life itself.”
I’ve seen blurbs using the word luminous before. But that word for those collections fell short of the mark. They were not “Luminous.” But it certainly is on the money when used for describing Sibilance.
This is an unexpected pleasure. Van Doren’s work is wonderful. I love this book.
For Creech’s The Sentence, I’d use the word stunning. Creech’s control and craft is superb. His use of rhyme, magnificent. Nobody writes formal poetry as well as this. Nobody.
I’m lulled and emblazoned at the same time. I love this book. I LOVE this book.
-Lenny DellaRocca