I’m a fighter and I’m gonna fight: a conversation with Suzanne Frischkorn and Georgia Popoff

Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast inviting poets to share and examine their work, produced and moderated by John Gillespie. Episode 12 features Suzanne Frischkorn and Georgia Popoff. Suzanne reads “Dear America” from her book Whipsaw and Georgia reads “St. Anthony and Stephen Hawking Conspire to Maintain Order” from her collection Living with Haints. Dear America by Suzanne Frischkorn 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        It's bloody work, but she should know It's time to teach her how to win a debate While applying lipstick without a mirror And how to hold her keys between her fingers in a parking lot It's time for her to hit the weight room Join the cross-country team Cast a spell, literally and figuratively And it's time for her to develop telekinesis and clairvoyance It's time she knows to never leave her drink unattended Never drink on an empty stomach Never drink before her period And maybe what I mean to say is—never drink alcohol period It's time to learn that one day she might switch grocery stores Because a guy on staff there gives her the creeps And even if it's less convenient to travel across town        It's always best to trust her intuition It's time to teach her that when a grown man stares at her New breasts, she is not the one who should feel ashamed America, she's her mother's daughter        She's got this   St. Anthony and Stephen Hawking Conspire to Maintain Order  By Georgia Popoff   If this is true, what else is true?  - Matthew Olzmann   In actual fact, nothing is solid.  Or so I have been told. The universe is comprised of a collection of molecules in close collaboration, making space even more vast than we ever assumed. This makes me cautious when climbing on my desk to hang a portrait of St. Francis de Sales the patron saint of writers What if I fell through? Where would I land?    Months before the Twin Towers defied the logic of solid steel,  I spent a week in Tuscany wandering through vineyards and cathedrals. The day before I traveled south to Rome, my white gold toe ring was suddenly absent. I tore the bed apart, retraced my steps.   Then I remembered the pray to St. Anthony. Then I recalled dangling my feet in the deep end of a pool, while staring across the valley striped with olives and grapes.   The tiny circle rested at the bottom near the drain. The caretaker saw it too. He trundled to his shed, returning with a long pole, a crooked nail pounded into the end.  His arm elbow deep, he fished for gold to answer my prayer.    Rome was crazed. Soccer is truth to Romans. Their team won  the Italian Cup for the first time in seventeen years. Families flooded streets, flowing towards Circus Maximus.  Tributaries all heading to the sea.   I stopped on a stone wide as a manhole cover rounded to a blue-gray mound. How many feet did it take to wear away all those tight molecules? No one else seemed to care.    My companion and I were in search of pasta, wading against the current. Up a cobblestone alley,  a tiny chapel spilled forth a wedding party, the bride  bright as gold, her groom beaming at his good fortune.    White calla lilies lined the aisle at the ends of the pews.  The walls bore saints in frames of the same warm wood, a brass offering box before each, a slim slot just wide enough to accept a coin or folded bill.   Close to the door, stoic St. Anthony drew me to a halt.  I pulled cash from a spot close to my heart. Reserving  enough for a meal, I pressed lire into a neat package.   Tonight, the Tokyo news tells the cable world a distraught father dives beneath the waves in Fukushima, searching for a miracle, a gold ring, a shoe, any hint of his daughter swallowed by the sea.  Swabbing a tombstone, he says, Each day I wash my face and her name.    He never knew how to dive before this. Grief drove him to it.  Once, he had a beloved. Then, in a space of a moment, no trace. Beneath the breakers, remnants of walls, cars, bicycles, evidence of the dead. All those molecules. The distance between  never to be filled. Bones, heart, skin, stardust.    Each life, a single cell in the expanse claiming no boundary, no logic, agreeing to be true.    Suzanne Frischkorn is a Cuban American poet and essayist. She is the author of four poetry books, most recently Whipsaw (Anhinga Press, 2024), and Fixed Star (JackLeg Press, 2022), as well as five chapbooks. She’s the recipient of The Writer’s Center Emerging Writers Fellowship for her book, Lit Windowpane, the Aldrich Poetry Award for her chapbook Spring Tide, selected by Mary Oliver, and a Connecticut Individual Artist Fellowship. Her poems have recently appeared in Denver Quarterly, North American Review, Salamander, South Dakota Review, and Latino Poetry: A Library of America Anthology. She is an editor at $–Poetry is Currency, and an assistant poetry editor for Terrain.org. Learn more at www.suzannefrischkorn.com Georgia A. Popoff is a writer, editor, arts-in-education specialist, and a program coordinator for the YMCA of Central NY’s Writers Voice, where she teaches poetry and creative nonfiction. Her fourth collection of poetry, Psychometry, released in late 2019 by Tiger Bark Press, was a finalist for Utica College’s Eugene Nassar Poetry Prize and the CNY Book Award for Poetry. Tiger Bark Press released her fifth collection, Living with Haints in spring 2024. In 2022, Georgia was named Poet Laureate of Onondaga County for a 3-year term of service, and received a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets in 2024. She is the acquisitions editor for the University of Michigan Press Under Discussion book series on contemporary poets. Learn more at www.georgiapopoff.com and www.poetshappydance.com This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website or Simplecast podcast feed for more episodes. Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more and get in touch: poetrymedicineforthesoul.com