Toi Derricotte
Biographic Data
| ID | 978047 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Toi Derricotte |
| GIVEN NAMES | Toi |
| FAMILY NAME | Derricotte |
| SIGNATURE | DERRICOTTE T |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 52 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
An Interview with Sharan Strange
The Night She Dreamed She Was Mad; the sculpture at night; The House is the Enemy; beau monde and
377 African American Review 50.4 (Winter 2017): 377© 2018 Johns Hopkins University Press and Saint Louis University Derricotte_Derricotte 2/13/2018 2:13 PM Page 377
Hotel Room
Hotel Room Toi Derricotte (bio) Hotel room:Curtains buried like a seedSnow melts soft nightlightInvisible drawn pillowsOn the other side writing [End Page 517] Toi Derricotte TOI DERRICOTTE is the author of a number of books of poems, including The Undertaker’s Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), Tender (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), which won the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize, and Captivity (University of Pittsburgh Press, 198…
Advance
Advance Toi Derricotte (bio) They process away,Lucille, Ruth, Maxine—the lightThrough glass through water,The news with the wall on top of itOr to the left of the rungs of the chair. [End Page 514] Toi Derricotte TOI DERRICOTTE is the author of a number of books of poems, including The Undertaker’s Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), Tender (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), which won the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize, and Captivit…
The Return
The Return Toi Derricotte (bio) The abused child is always back thereSteering the bus. I want to writeAs if there’s nothing between us,A membrane that can be pulledAway like a magician’s scarf. [End Page 510] Toi Derricotte TOI DERRICOTTE is the author of a number of books of poems, including The Undertaker’s Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), Tender (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), which won the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize, a…
Dialogue
Dialogue Toi Derricotte (bio) I’m not a purist, the President claimsAs he chews a Nicorette. A soliderIs stationed in a small roomTo guard his suit, which hangsOn a bathroom door on Air Force One. [End Page 515] Toi Derricotte TOI DERRICOTTE is the author of a number of books of poems, including The Undertaker’s Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), Tender (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), which won the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize…
Write
Write Toi Derricotte (bio) Writing is the sameAs living: Do it breathingIn and out fully.Each second you can beginAgain to know who you are. [End Page 511] Toi Derricotte TOI DERRICOTTE is the author of a number of books of poems, including The Undertaker’s Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), Tender (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), which won the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize, and Captivity (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989). …
Snowed-in in Boston
Snowed-in in Boston Toi Derricotte (bio) Changes the idea of Kore:Ever want to disappearUnderground for a winterWithout being knocked in the head by a demon? [End Page 512] Toi Derricotte TOI DERRICOTTE is the author of a number of books of poems, including The Undertaker’s Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), Tender (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), which won the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize, and Captivity (University of Pittsbur…
An Old Cherry Tree
An Old Cherry Tree Toi Derricotte (bio) Cracked straight through the middle,A crocodile with grey-black warts.A few delicate pink skinsFloat, nearly bodiless. [End Page 516] Toi Derricotte TOI DERRICOTTE is the author of a number of books of poems, including The Undertaker’s Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), Tender (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), which won the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize, and Captivity (University of Pittsbu…
Escape
Escape Toi Derricotte (bio) We live inDifficult zones.You can let yourself outOf hell. You can burnAny old place. [End Page 513] Toi Derricotte TOI DERRICOTTE is the author of a number of books of poems, including The Undertaker’s Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), Tender (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), which won the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize, and Captivity (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989). Elected a Chancellor of the…
Reports of the Saints
Reports of the Saints Toi Derricotte (bio) Every messenger from the other sidesays first:(getting us ready like a good lover):Do not be afraid. They drowse over usLike spaceships;Or they float uplike orange jellyfish. [End Page 508] Toi Derricotte TOI DERRICOTTE is the author of a number of books of poems, including The Undertaker’s Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), Tender (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), which won the 1998 …
Truth is Form
Truth is Form Toi Derricotte (bio) Her mother wouldn’t let her touchThe classics. Wrapped in plastic,She kept the family treasures clean.Our mothers teach us what we want.Our bodies refuse to stay thin. [End Page 509] Toi Derricotte TOI DERRICOTTE is the author of a number of books of poems, including The Undertaker’s Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), Tender (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), which won the 1998 Paterson Poetry…
Billie in Frankfurt
Billie in Frankfurt Toi Derricotte (bio) The German audiences— who often recognized black artists in a way white Americans could not—welcomed her with an uproar, hoots & hollers of joy & expectation— My heart is jumpin,’ you started somethin . . . At first, tentative— drug-slow & heartless— as if she wasn’t (as Carmen McRae once said) only happy when she sang, or as if maybe now, she was never happy, near dead & propped up on the bones of her rep…
Andante Tenemarente
Andante Tenemarente Toi Derricotte (bio) is a musical term Brahms used late in life, direction for the piano music he composed for his beloved Clara Schumann. It was after her muscles had failed to such an extent that she couldn’t perform the strenuous pieces that had made her reputation. He too was older, in his late sixties, and had used up much of the bravura of the earlier symphonies. Now he wrote with an extended easy line more like intimate…
May Your Days Go by in Beauty & Wonder
May Your Days Go by in Beauty & Wonder Toi Derricotte (bio) I write on a friend’s birthday card; & then, I find on my mom’s Begonia, for the first time since her death, a pale purplish flower straining toward light. It’s been three years. I bend to look— a bud with pale gold threads —though I’ve never fed it. Why now? When nothing’s changed. Then I remember: It’s the anniversary of her death! & she reaches to touch me. [End Page 323] Toi Derricot…
Magnificat
Dolls
Dolls Toi Derricotte (bio) i. Take care of your little mother, my aunt told meshortly before she died. My little five foot four inch mother,whose clothes I outgrew when I was ten, alreadyproud of my big bones—(because nothing could overpowerme if I was made of my father's bones!) My mother was astounded—I should put bricks on your head, & she kept dressing mein pinafores & ruffled socks. Toi, she called me, as if I wassupposed to stay small. ii. …
When the Goddess Makes Love to Me
When the Goddess Makes Love to Me Toi Derricotte (bio) When the Goddess makes love to me, she has to pass through my father,she has to find himwhere he sits in a corner inside mecold as a turd.I can't reach him anymore.I don't have the strength to yank him out& blow on his breasts.She has to tuck her fingers between his thighs& warm him, slowly—first the shoulders & the tops of his arms.She has to coax the crying boyto come through the deadwalkin…
Won't You Celebrate with Me
Seeing and Re-Seeing
Seeing and Re-Seeing:An Exchange between Yusef Komunyakaa and Toi Derricotte Toi Derricotte (bio) and Yusef Komunyakaa (bio) "It's truth we're after," Komunyakaa says in "Safe Subjects," a poem from his early book, Copacetic. But it won't be an easy truth. Redemptive as a straight razor against the jugular vein— unacknowledged & unforgiven. It's truth we're after here, hurting for, out in the streets where my brothers kill each other . . . For Ko…
The Christ Child Speaks to St. Anthony
Callaloo - Volume 25, Number 2, Spring 2002
Joseph's Dream
An African/American in Paris
Toi Derricotte is author of four books of poetry and a memoir, The Black Notebooks. The Black Notebooks won the Annisfield-Wolf Award in nonfiction and the nonfiction award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association in 1997. Her latest book of poems, Tender, won the Paterson Poetry Prize in 1998. She is co-founder (with Cornelius Eady) of Cave Canem, the first workshop for African-American poets
Natural Birth
My Uncle & White People
Toi Derricotte is author of four books of poetry and a memoir, The Black Notebooks. The Black Notebooks won the Annisfield-Wolf Award in nonfiction and the nonfiction award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association in 1997. Her latest book of poems, Tender, won the Paterson Poetry Prize in 1998. She is co-founder (with Cornelius Eady) of Cave Canem, the first workshop for African-American poets
No prominent works on this page.
The Cruel Mother
For a New Child
Poetry
On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black Female Corpses
Fifty
Leaving
Excerpts from "The Black Notebooks," a Work-in-Progress
Poem for My Father
The Rice King of the South
Christmas Eve
with tortoise pins, like huge insects, some belonging to her dead mother, some to my living grandmother. Sitting on the stool at the mirror, she applied a peachy foundation that seemed to hold her down, to trap her, as if we never would have noticed what flew among us unless it was weighted and bound in its mask. Vaseline shined her eyebrows, mascara darkened her lashes until they swept down like feathers; her eyes deepened until they shone from …
Letter to an Editor Who Wants to Publish a Black Writer
The Promise
Holy Cross Hospital
Callaloo - Volume 24, Number 3, Summer 2001
The Minks
Brother
After a Reading at a Black School
For Black Women Who Are Afraid
Exits from Elmina Castle
Exits from Elmina CastleCape Coast, Ghana* Toi Derricotte (bio) Gotta find a way out of no way. Traditional Black folk saying The Journey There is no perfectpast to go back to. Each time I lookinto your eyes, I see the long hesitationof ten thousand years, your mothers’ motherssitting under the shade trees on boxes, waiting.There is some great question in your eye that nolonger needs asking: the ballglistening, wet; the black irisintense. We know…
An Interview with Sharan Strange
Callaloo - Volume 19, Number 2, Spring 1996
Introduction
IntroductionWriting The Black Notebooks* Toi Derricotte (bio) Language is the only homeland. —Czeslaw Milosz I began writing this book in the middle of a severe depression. My husband and I had just moved into an all-white middle- and upper-class neighborhood ten miles from New York City. I had spent months looking at houses, over eighty, and I had decided not to take my husband with me to the real estate offices because, since he is recognizably…
At Wintergreen
Callaloo - Volume 20, Number 1, Winter 1997
For Sharan Strange, After a Reading
Callaloo - Volume 20, Number 1, Winter 1997
Cave Canem
Cave CanemAn Introduction Toi Derricotte (bio) Cave Canem: A Special Section Cave Canem, the first workshop/retreat for African-American poets, was co-founded in 1996 by Cornelius Eady and myself. It was established in recognition of a need for a safe space in which African-American poets, marginalized from mainstream American poetry, often writing in isolation or having to explain and/or justify their words, could meet, write, read their poetry,…
For Sonia Sanchez on the Publication of Shake Loose My Skin, 1999
Callaloo - Volume 22, Number 4, Fall 1999
An African/American in Paris
Toi Derricotte is author of four books of poetry and a memoir, The Black Notebooks. The Black Notebooks won the Annisfield-Wolf Award in nonfiction and the nonfiction award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association in 1997. Her latest book of poems, Tender, won the Paterson Poetry Prize in 1998. She is co-founder (with Cornelius Eady) of Cave Canem, the first workshop for African-American poets
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