Product Details
Tender (Pitt Poetry Series)

Tender (Pitt Poetry Series)
By Toi Derricotte

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Product Description

A collection of poetry by American poet, Toi Derricotte. This is her fourth published volume, following, "Natural Birth", "The Empress of the Death House", and "Captivity".

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #1429174 in Books
  • Published on: 1997-08-14
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 96 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
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 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 cliche, these poems probe being at its root?sexually, spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually?and recount how violence?both physical and mental?ravages 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
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
1:30 A.m.
After A Reading At A Black College
At A Cocktail Party Honoring A Noted Old Southern Writer (1)
At Wintergreen: A Retreat For African-american Women Writers
Black Boys Play The Classics
The Blessing
The Body Awakening
Bookstore
Brother
Clitoris
Coming
Dead Baby Speaks
Death At Still Point
Exits From Elmina Castle: Cape Coast, Ghana; Above Elmina
Exits From Elmina Castle: Cape Coast, Ghana; Beneath Elmina
Exits From Elmina Castle: Cape Coast, Ghana; Market
Exits From Elmina Castle: Cape Coast, Ghana; Power
Exits From Elmina Castle: Cape Coast, Ghana; Slavery
Exits From Elmina Castle: Cape Coast, Ghana; The Journey
Exits From Elmina Castle: Cape Coast, Ghana; The Tour
Exits From Elmina Castle: Cape Coast, Ghana; Tourists' Lunch
Family Secrets
For Black Women Who Are Afraid
For Sharan Strange, After A Reading
For Sister Sue Ellen And Her Special Messenger
From A Letter: About Snow
Grace Paley Reading
In The Mountains
Inventory
Invisible Dreams
Not Forgotten
On Katchimac Bay: Homer, Alaska
On The Miracle Of The Crying Statue: Before You Begin
The Origins Of The Artist: Natalie Cole
Passing (1)
Shoe Repair Business
Tender
The Touch
Two Poems: Bird
Two Poems: Peripheral
When My Father Was Beating Me
Workshop On Racism (2)
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

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

Toi Derricotte seems to write from a place deep in her body. . . . I am grateful for her honesty, her exactness, her sense of justice and openness to love.....Derricotte's range of diction, form, and subject is grand. -- Women's Review of Books

Review

“There are poems that stick with you like a song that won’t stop repeating itself in your brain, poems whose cadences burrow into your bloodstream, orchestrating your breathing long before their sense attaches its hooks to your heart. Even after you think you’ve got a handle on a particular passage--how that imagery works to support the narrative, the interlocking patterns of the observed adn the unsaid--something elusive keeps sending you back to the page; and with each new reading, another layer of mystery will gently exhale and open up. Much like a favorite grandparent’s parable-disguised-as-an-anecdote, the poem will unofld when you need it but least expect it, illuminating its revelations as you grow into the lessons life has to offer.”
--The Washington Post

Customer Reviews

a wonderful book5
Bravo to Toi Derricotte on this collection of poems. No other poet I can think of writes so beautifully and movingly on the subject of race. There's a lot of pain beneath the surface of racial relations, but Toi Derricote's words make something of beauty from that pain. Highly recommended.

Moving and unforgettable poems.5
The poems in this collection are outstanding. They tackle subjects that many readers, we white ones especially, too often avoid because they are so painful. Derricotte's poetry handles racism in a complex and truthful way, without softening any blows. For me, the poems are less "about racism" than they evoke and inhabit the context of racism in which all people of color must move. This is a powerful and important work by a truly first rate poet.