What I love about Toi Derricotte’s poetry is her raw honesty of what most people would protect as “family secrets.” Every night, I turn one page after another because I want to see what Toi will let us know next, and what connections and insights she makes of it.
“Family secrets” insinuates something is wrong. Something is certainly troubling; but in the world of poetry whose essence is to open up the complexity of our experiences, I marvel at Toi’s perseverance as she zeroes in on the doll; on the pet fish, Telly; on the concept of memoirs; on the photo of a dad holding his baby girl which appears on the cover of the book where love, harm, and the mangle of actions and emotions are untangled, revisited, re-explored, over and over again.
Perhaps Hollywood movies and sound-bites on the news like to present our lives as here it begins, this is what is good & evil, and here it ends; poetry—especially Toi’s—lets us think, ponder, and wonder, and Toi’s poetry in particular makes it easy for us as the readers. That is to say, Toi’s poetry is accessible for a complex subject.
I want to ask Toi whether she put in hours of turmoil to write this book. I want to ask whether she woke up in the middle of the night, often, to continue the writing, and whether she stopped at times because she couldn’t yet get to the right word, and whether at times the rush of adrenaline had a symbiotic relationship with what she was discovering as she wrote. Or if Toi’s process is very different from my imagination. I’m trying to understand how poets wrestle with this type of complexity, then make it so clear.
I saw Toi at several poetry events in Pittsburgh these past few weeks, but was too shy to ask.
Maybe another time I can talk with Toi about her process of writing. For now, I ended this blog piece with the word “Respect,” then deleted it; with “Honor,” then deleted; with “Thank you, Toi” and deleted.
I’m still searching for the right word to match my emotion and the life changing within me.