The Undertaker's Daughter

October 15, 2011

Paterson Poetry Prize winner Derricotte (Tender) offers a painful memoir of child abuse balanced by poems that attempt to unbury and heal the self. The narrator's father, who studied embalming in order to apprentice with her grandfather, never practiced that trade. But he used his anatomical knowledge to beat her so that the bruises wouldn't show. When she fails to clean her dinner plate, she has given him the excuse he needs: "'Your story is so touching till it sounds like a lie.' I swallowed it down; I wiped that look off my face." Derricotte recalls how her bed had to be folded up each night to make room for the dinner table; other versions of the story occur within similarly claustrophobic places, followed by poems about family, love, art, and a pet betta (fighting fish) named Telly, which she loves and nurses into death. This childlike attempt to reverse her life's karma by caring for a fish whose natural habitat is a puddle in Asia shows us that "it's either a very small or a very large place we live in--our cosmos, our kitchen." VERDICT This is a personal, moving work about child abuse, racial "passing," and women making art, and will attract all readers interested in these topics.--Ellen Kaufman, New York

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2011
In her fifth collection, Derricotte presents a series of haunting poems, many of which probe the dynamics between father and daughter. Winner of two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim Foundation, among other honors, Derricotte evokes Audre Lorde and Sharon Olds. Short, choppy poems juxtapose with her long prose poems. The inquisitive, wise voice in Derricotte's poetry lures, as in Burial sites: she remembers the hitting, but not the feeling of the hits. In this hybrid eulogy and rant, Derricotte captures and reveals the hidden dimensions of the father-daughter relationship, achingly describing a father who knew the workings of the heart. Derricotte's mastery resides in her ability to convey her anger while proclaiming her love. However, her poems do not only focus on Plathian daddy rage; she constructs beauty in Lighting the tulips. Derricotte writes: It's all about longing . . . I meditate and, after memory fades, there are these four sparkles firing. A collection of poems that will long sparkle and fire in readers' minds.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)