2017 Poet Crush List

I'm flattered to be on this 2017 Poet Crush List among some very fine poets, but feel compelled to let you know my books are not out of print. Both Lit Windowpane and Girl on a Bridge are available at the MSR Bookstore for a very reasonable price. LOL! 

New Review of Lit Windowpane

What a wonderful surprise, Serena Agusto-Cox has written a lovely and thoughtful review of my first book, "Lit Windowpane." You can read it here.

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Inspired

by all the book trailers appearing around the blogosphere I attempted my own. This was much more fun than I thought it would be...thanks to Kelli, Diane, & Sandra for all the tips.

Ocean

The lovely Michelle McGrane, of Peony Moon features a poem from Lit Windowpane today.

And Another

Robert Lee Brewer interviews me for his Poetic Asides series.

Simmons Buntin Reviews Lit Windowpane

in the Winter/Spring 2009 issue of Terrain - A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments

Regardless of the elemental source—Lit Windowpane is full of earth and air and water—each poem settles over us like a fine dew—not suffocating, but synaptic and oddly comforting.

Yet as we revisit the poems, we come to realize that much of their allure lies also in how they converse with each other and the larger body of poetry. Some are direct responses: “The Mermaid Takes Issue with the Fable,” Frischkorn notes, was written in response to Pablo Neruda’s “The Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks.”

But many respond based simply on their placement next to other poems. The first dozen or so work almost as diptychs, the poem on the left triggering the poem on the right, or vice versa. Often the poems’ titles clue the relationship—“Youth Drowns in Housatonic River” flows across from “Naugatuck River Valley, Connecticut” while “Watermark” counters “Freshwater Notecards”—but in each case the verse truly completes the connection.

“I am the river and the river / is contaminated,” Frischkorn writes in “Youth Drowns…,” while “Naugatuck River Valley….” begins “How long it takes the river to come clean.”

The approach is subtle yet playful, and sets the tone for the parallels of light and dark found throughout the book, parallels reflected in the book’s title as well as the window and windowpane references throughout.

Small Press Spotlight

Rigoberto Gonzalez interviews me for his Small Press Spotlight series at Critcal Mass the blog of the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors.

I reveal all the sordid details in my

First Book Interview

Scott Owens Reviews Lit Windowpane

in the new issue of The Wild Goose Poetry Review

Spare, quiet, minimal in its approach, Suzanne Frischkorn’s new collection of poetry, Lit Windowpane, beautifully illustrates the power poetry has to say a great deal in only a few words. Most of the poems here are brief. “November’s Window,” the shortest, is not even as long as a haiku, 13 syllables in this case, and yet, those 13 syllables remind us of the power of the image to create deep, resonant meaning:

Street light’s orange glow--
a branding iron on the iris.

In these lines, the necessary glow of the street light metaphorically suggests the declining season of growth that now claims ownership of the iris. The title of the poem, as numerous titles in the collection, also reminds us of the importance of perspective, of the fact that, in the words of Paul Davies, “Nothing can be seen in isolation, for the very act of observation must involve a coupling of some sort.” It is this vital coupling, ultimately, that the speaker of these poems would have us meditate upon, a coupling that forbids us from taking things for granted and from letting the importance, the vitality, and the spirituality of the natural world vanish too easily.

Lit Windowpane Book Party - Thursday, November 20

Suzanne Frischkorn & Margot Schilpp
Yale Bookstore
77 Broadway at York Square
New Haven
6:00pm - 7:30pm



You're invited! Join us afterwards at Thali Too, located at 65 Broadway in the courtyard behind the Yale Bookstore -- there will be revelry.

In addition to Lit Windowpane, Suzanne Frischkorn is the author of several chapbooks most recently: American Flamingo (MiPOesias Press, 2008) Spring Tide, (Aldrich Museum, 2005) and Red Paper Flower, (Little Poem Press, 2004). She is the recipient of the Aldrich Poetry Award, and an Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism.

Margot Schilpp's books are The World's Last Night (2001) and Laws of My Nature (2005), both from Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her poetry has appeared in Chelsea, The Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, Denver Quarterly, Hotel Amerika and is forthcoming in American Poetry Review. She lives in New Haven with her husband and their two daughters, and is at work on her third collection, Civil Twilight.

The Wonderful & Talented

Justin Evans reviews Lit Windowpane.

Thanks

for the shout outs Cynthia & Rebecca,  not only because I respect and admire you both deeply, but to tell you the truth, once I realized people might actually read it, that it was literally out of my hands, I felt, hmm, how should I put this? You know how your stomach drops once you reach the top of a roller coaster? Or do you remember when you realized that the baby was coming out one way or another, whether you wanted it to or not? That feeling? I like to call it a hint of trepidation. Yes, I definitely felt a hint of trepidation. Just a hint.  

Loveyougirls!

Book, book, book

MSRP is offering 30 percent off the cover price for advance online orders of Lit Windowpane. ($9.00) Please spread the word. Transactions are handled by PayPal which accepts credit cards and personal checks quickly and securely. Order yours here. Thanks so much for all your support and for supporting the small press!



Advance Praise for Lit Windowpane

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

O.K., Now it Feels Real

Just sent off my ms with its final edits, cover art, author photo & bio to MSRP so the design process can get started. I'm full of nervous excitement. All that's left to send are the blurbs.

The Reveal

Lit Windowpane, my first full-length book, will be released by Main Street Rag Press in Autumn, 2008!