Tender

by Toi Derricotte

Overview

Toi Derricotte's fourth collection of poetry. Tender probes sexuality, spirituality, emotion, child abuse, mother hatred, and the physical and psychological ravages of violence. These poems are raw and upsetting in subject matter, yet extremely readable.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822978527
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	09/15/1997
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	641 KB

About the Author

Toi Derricotte is an award-winning poet whose work tackles difficult and universal subject matter such as violence, racism, motherhood, and self-identity through an autobiographical lens. She is the author of The Undertaker’s Daughter and four previous poetry collections, including Tender, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among other honors. Derricotte is cofounder of Cave Canem, professor emerita at the University of Pittsburgh, and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Table of Contents

Contents Preface Tender I. Exits From Elmina Castle: Cape Coast, Ghana II. When My Father Was Beating Me III. Black Boys Play the Classics Shoe Repair Business Brother Family Secrets After a Reading at a Black College For Black Women Who Are Afraid Passing Inventory Bookstore At a Cocktail Party Honoring a Noted Old Southern Writer Workshop on Racism IV. Invisible Dreams Two Poems V. 1:30 A.M. VI. Dead Baby Speaks VII. The Body Awakening For Sharan Strange, After a Reading For Sister Sue Ellen and Her Special Messenger At Wintergreen: A Retreat for African-American Women Writers The Origins of the Artist: Natalie Cole On Katchimac Bay: Homer, Alaska Coming From a Letter: About Snow Death at Still Point The Blessing Not Forgotten The Touch Grace Paley Reading In the Mountains On the Miracle of the Crying Statue: Before You Begin Clitoris

Editorial Reviews

In her fourth book, the award-winning Derricotte (Captivity, etc.) focuses on the aftermath of slavery, continued sexism and violence within the family. These poems plunge into the psychology of race and gender and other key components of identity. The seven sections radiate, like spokes of a wheel, from the title poem, which reads in its entirety: "The tenderest meat/ comes from the houses/ where you hear the least// squealing. The secret/ is to give a little/ wine before killing." Derricotte, a light-skinned African American woman, wrestles with "passing" in a still racist society. Her work reaches out into the black and white and comes up with meaning that is often complex and richin short, gray. Her subjects range from the Portuguese slave traders' fortress in Ghana (where Africans were held before being loaded onto ships), to domestic violence (in the prose poem, "When My Father was Beating Me"). The wheel comes full circle in the last section, which is about a remarkable sexual reawakening, and ends with a startling short poem, "Clitoris." Derricotte delivers frankness and hope through her thoughtful probing of encounters with complex racial and sexual relations. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Dericotte's preface to this work, her fourth collection of poems, invites the reader to proceed in a nonlinear fashion, with the title poem as the hub from which each section radiates. Yet part of the charm of Dericotte's workdespite its raw and upsetting subject matteris its extreme readability, from start to finish. In plain language that does not settle for simplicity or clich, these poems probe being at its rootsexually, spiritually, emotionally, and intellectuallyand recount how violenceboth physical and mentalravages the self. One topic of particular concern is "passing"Dericotte is a light-skinned African American who is often taken for white: "Oh, my people,/ sometimes you look at me with such unwillingness/ as I look at you!/ I keep trying to prove/ I am not what I think you think." Section 6, "Dead Baby," is a moving litany about child abuse and mother-hatred that evokes the music of Walt Whitman in its strategic deployment of the hexameter line. Recommended for all poetry collections.Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York

Library Journal

"In sections of Tender, her new book of poems,...a light-skinned black woman, focuses intensely and wonderfully on blackness....Dericotte's language feels, as usual, fresh and urgent, but Tender is a highly crafted volume, with poems lodged in an intricate structure....Dericotte's range of diction, form and subject is grand....She also excels in surreal litany, the loose, open line of the chant, as "Dead Baby Speaks" to the mother who permitted the father's beatings....For people loved and tortured by the same hands, nothing is simple....in the final, dazzling "spoke" it's hard not to feel release, from "The Body Awakening" to the book's concluding poem....Thus "tender" is transformed from absolue victimization to the open space of love." -- The Women's Review of Books

Melanie Kaye Kantrowitz

In her fourth book, the award-winning Derricotte focuses on the aftermath of slavery, continued sexism and violence within the family. These poems plunge into the psychology of race and gender and other key components of identity. . . . Her work reaches out into the black and white and comes up with meaning that is often complex and rich—in short, gray. . . . Derricotte delivers frankness and hope through her thoughtful probing of encounters with complex racial and sexual relations.”

—Publishers Weekly

"Part of the charm of Derricotte's work - despite its raw and upsetting subject matter - is its extreme readability, from start to finish. In plain language that does not settle for simplicity or cliché, these poems probe being at its root - sexually, spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually - and recount how violence-both physical and mental-ravages the self. . . . Recommended for all poetry collections."

—Library Journal

"Raw, honest and provocative. It hits those vulnerable spots in us where we question our openness to such issues as racial harmony and sexual freedom. . . . This is an emotionally compelling collection, one that lives for the reader in its stark images."

—Kliatt

"Derricotte's language feels, as usual, fresh and urgent, but Tender is a highly crafted volume, with poems lodged in an intricate structure. . . . Derricotte's range of diction, form, and subject is grand."

—Women's Review of Books

From the Publisher