“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

“Suzanne Frischkorn writes poems that hit us in the gut, poems that bear witness to the violence and denial at the heart of so many American families. At one point she invokes the name of Antigone, an American Antigone: a brother in the grave, and Montgomery Clift, after the head-on collision, "with severed nerves and lopsided features." In her best poems we are unaware of the superb craft bearing them up from beneath. Frischkorn is carving a place for herself in the territory mapped out by Anne Sexton and Adrienne Rich, more recently, Dorothy Allison and Kim Addonizio.”

- Douglas Goetsch

Some poetry books require great patience from the reader. A poet may be admirable, but that same poet may not stimulate the reader's urge to continue with enthusiasm. Suzanne Frischkorn's Red Paper Flower succeeds where others have failed.

This book of poems pulls a reader through each selection in a perfect duet. The poet engages the reader by offering each well-crafted poem with a back story that is actually interesting. Frischkorn's book, bluntly put, is a good read.

Twenty-four poems feature a strong female voice, and the poems are peopled with supporting characters of all ages and both genders. The lead poem, "Bees," is a piece successfully compacted, a reflection in a woman's voice exploring sexual awakening with phrases like "bee stings," for developing breasts and the crush she has on the speaker of that phrase, Roger. The poet opens the door to the rest of the book by noting this single day on the porch "wrecked my posture for years." As the reader completes this poem, the significance of the title unfolds the world of adolescence, and it is a world believable to male and female.

Within the book, the speaker explores relationships between men and women, parents and children, and in-laws. In one poem, a brother is buried, and the speaker cries loudly "to make up for the empty pews." In another poem, she watches a woman go back in to the grocery store, "a plastic bag over her arm." The poet paints a striking image of the woman, likening her thighs to "large bass/slicing through a tide."

The poems in Red Paper Flower are set in free verse, but form is important to this poet. One poem about Andrea Yates, "How Long Do You Think the Devil's Been in Me?", is shaped in sections. The first section defines asphyxia. The second section is a how-to for drowning and includes a quote from Dr. Spock. The final section is a script of short lines that are exchanges between the murderer and her husband. Each line in this poem is cut to the bone, devoid of maudlin sentiment and self-expressed horror. That's precisely why it chills the reader.

Frischkorn uses devices such as assonance and alliteration in poems like "The First Signs," where repeated "S" sounds create an aural flow like a hiss that leads to the final line, "...there are two shades of still." Within this 13 line poem, there is budding forsythia heralding spring, a wasp sting, and a child who squeezes six new kittens until they die. Not many poets could weave all those elements into a memorable poem, but this poet does.

In each poem, the line is measured with expertise, and images are carefully crafted so that the reader is grounded but not so grounded that the poem stops at first read. On the contrary, repeated readings unfold each poem in a pleasing manner, such as the poem, "Peony," that begins, "My husband hands his fever over/as if he slit open a woman/to reveal a yellow spray..." The final statement in this six line poem, "I am not your mother.." opens a fertile path for exploring the relationship between speaker and lover.

Literally thousands of poetry books are published each year, many of them winners in prestigious contests. And many of those books end up collecting dust on a shelf. Suzanne Frischkorn's book is published by a respectable small literary press that has managed to offer up a book of poetry that is not only interesting, it's interesting enough for multiple readings. That in itself is a remarkable accomplishment. These are poems that stay with a reader, and they're poems that pull the reader into a journey of wonder, a journey where musing is encouraged and skill is evident.

By Kay Day
May 3, 2004

“Frischkorn is smart, sexy, tough, funny, energetic, poignant, and hard-boiled…Red Paper Flower is precisely what a lot of us out here in poetry's hot slum have been praying for. Yes.” - Angelo Verga