Review: Suzanne Frischkorn
On Fixed Star by Suzanne Frischkorn
by Tyler Truman Julian
In her third collection, Fixed Star, Suzanne Frischkorn delves into the process of mythmaking that shapes identity, while exploring the multifaceted aspects of being first generation Cuban-American. The collection intricately examines the complexities of politics, locations, and family dynamics in defining this distinctive identity. Frischkorn’s poems do not hesitate to delve into these complications, relying heavily on the imagery of place and embrace the sonnet form to give the collection its backbone. Fixed Star is beautiful and singular, telling a story often politicized and manipulated with nuance and personality. As Frischkorn’s speaker works through her personal family history, the reader also reckons with Cuban-US relations, the power of language to build bridges or create islands and the myths we tell ourselves about ourselves.
Fixed Star is filled with locations, both domestic and foreign, and all contain deep meaning for the speaker and the content of the collection. Within a postcolonial context, these locales can represent dispossession and identity struggle, and Suzanne Frischkorn’s speaker knows there is something about the soil that makes a person. Just as different soils render different flavored grapes in winemaking,
It is the dark,
dusty ground that gives
to tobacco its aroma and flavor. (“My Body Translated”)
This reality is complicated for the children of immigrants, who become American citizens as a result of jus soli, the right of the soil, when they are born in the United States but their family is from somewhere else. These children often live in a state of limbo— neither here (the United States) nor there (the parents’ home country)—and the speaker of these poems lives in this liminal space, trying to articulate where home is:
If you speak quickly I will understand if I don’t
try to understand my first language. You must
understand it was stolen—
legend, song, all of it
a fading stain by firing squad. (“Papaya”)
The impact of the Cuban Revolution and the diaspora that ensued is pressing in these poems and has resulted in a loss of culture and familial understanding. “My parents only used Spanish to curse,” the speaker explains about this loss.
The scent of Cohibas,
a recipe for black bean soup
and how to roll the r in naranja.
That’s all the Cuban my father gave me. (“How Do You Say Orange?”)
She adds,
What it means to be Cuban
hyphenated? I don’t know—
My father’s from Cuba. I’m American.
He wanted me to learn one language really well. (“What It Means to be Cuban, Hyphenated”)
Frischkorn’s attention to detail is sharp and clear in the titling of these poems. The revolution has instigated the move to the United States, but the speaker declares that her body is also a revolution:
Its propaganda tucked
inside a push-up bra. (“My Body as a Revolution”)
The move out of Cuba itself may be radical, but growing up and making her own story in the face of erasure is the true revolution. This exploration of self is interrupted by a sequence of sonnets exploring the father-daughter relationship in which the speaker continues “with my father’s story, / making up details as I go along” (“IX”). In these poems, the speaker can imagine her father’s experience in Cuba and participate in the revolution. She continues in the next sonnet,
Making up details as I go along
I held my hands up to the generals.
I walked around investigating:
the endless star, an empty net, the fish
trapped inside the wind.
The first night was wonderful—
adrift amid the remnants.
In the empty house I hear the sea.
The boats were manned by brothers,
uncles, cousins, blood ties, a bond
love can twist. All the years by the sea
taught her every definition of blue.
There was a lot of lechery and disorder.
And I am queen on that island. (“X”)
This imaginative play and the formal poetic treatment of the subject through the sonnet form allow the daughter to build a relationship with the father and Cuba, creating the proverbial Beloved out of both, and allowing self-actualization and meaning making. The speaker knows that this is, nevertheless, incomplete; it is “how we lose ourselves to myth, to legend, and how you find me, with regrets only” (“Spanish”). It’s in traveling to Spain and seeing herself as an individual person that she finds Cuba: “I came to the source, seeking the shape // of my eye, my nose—I passed as a native, and at last / found a way home. I discovered Cuba in Retiro Parque” (“Granada”). Through a second sequence of sonnets taking the speaker to tourist locations in Spain, the speaker develops an internal, personal Cuba that defies political and social boundaries. The Beloved this time may actually be herself.
Fixed Star tells a powerful story of myth, family, and self. As a result, Suzanne Frischkorn’s poetry retells and adds to Cuba’s story of American exile, while also remaining deeply personal. Fixed Star becomes truer in its search for truth than most mainstream commentary about US-Cuban relations. As we continue the necessary work to understand both our own histories and the histories of our neighbors more deeply, we should not forget to also turn to poetry. Poetry is political because it is personal and it tells human stories, adding depth and truth to stories that become one-sided when they hit the mainstream. Fixed Star by Suzanne Frischkorn is a just such poetry. It should be read, internalized, and ultimately, enjoyed.