Whipsaw

The latest collection from award-winning Cuban American poet Suzanne Frischkorn, Whipsaw delves into the culture of violence in the United States, the Anthropocene, and family history. Poems of place and climate grief are braided with the harrowing experience of motherhood in the time of ’me too’, police brutality, and mass shootings. Through lyric, erasure, and origin story Whipsaw bears witness in the age of anxiety. Along the way Frischkorn observes the forest, its ecology and its wildlife, as it transforms through the seasons. In lucid images and lyrical language she reveals the resilience of the natural world and reflects on the wisdom it has for humanity. Voice driven, defiant, elegiac in mood, yet not without hope: ’Do you remember the morning after the ice storm? / How the wind through the branches / sounded like the parting of bead curtains?’ Throughout Whipsaw the wonders of the forest provide solace.