Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry How do you gain access to the power of parts of yourself you abhor, and make them sing with beauty, tenderness, and compassion? This is a record of fifty years of victories in the reclamation of a poet's voice. The story of Toi Derricotte is a hero's odyssey. It is the journey of a poetic voice that in each book earns her way to home, to her own commanding powers. I: New and Selected Poems shows the reader both the closeness of the enemy and the poet's inherent courage, inventiveness, and joy. It is a record of one woman's response to the repressive and fracturing forces around the subjects of race, class, color, gender, and sexuality. Each poem is an act of victory, finding a path through repressive forces to speak with both beauty and truth. This collection features more than thirty new poems as well as selections from five of Derricotte's previously published books of poetry.