Jonathan Fletcher reviews
Scorched Earth
by Tiana Clark

Tiana Clark’s latest collection of poetry, Scorched Earth, is nothing if not confessional.  With such arresting titles as “Self-Portrait at Divorce,” “When I Kissed Her Right Breast, I Became Myself Entirely,” “I Masturbate Then Pray to God,” or “First Date During Social Distance,” Clark is as transparent as she is unapologetic, as imaginative as she is skillful.  Though this collection is indeed highly personal, it is irreducible to mere autobiography, however poetic.  As much as she pulls deep from within, Clark also pulls from far outside, often transversing time and place.  As much as she recounts pain, she also recalls pleasure and joy.  As much as she relates lived experience, she also bears witness.  Though anything but pedantic, Scorched Earth is nonetheless instructive.  Though admittedly secular, it is profoundly spiritual, even if sacred and profane in equal measure.

Throughout Clark’s collection, beautifully understated moments (however frustrating and invalidating) abound.  For example, in the poem, “After the Reading,” a piece in which title not only flows into the first line but also functions anaphorically, the speaker recounts (midway through) that “a white woman thanked me for my ‘angry poems’. I told her they were about my joy, and then she touched my forearm and said, ‘No, they were about my rage.’ Insisting” (Clark 13).  What makes these lines so powerful is the seeming ease with which the author lets the subtext of these moments operate (the intergenerational subordination on which the other woman’s verbal/gestural presumptuousness operates), as well as the trust that Clark places in the reader.  Allowing them to intuit from the other woman’s words and actions what is being suggested (or, rather, outright conveyed), Clark is not only doing what the most successful poets do (i.e., let the reader have an experience rather than be told what is happening or what they should feel), but is also (and simultaneously) refusing to explain or accommodate, as is society’s traditional (and unfortunately still-extant) expectations of historically marginalized communities, specifically (and in this case) Black women.  In this way, such a clearly intentionally poetic move becomes more than a sign of literary skill; it becomes an empowering, unapologetic, and wonderfully transgressive gesture.

Elsewhere in the collection, subtext plays a crucial role, no less so than in the poem, “Delta Delta Delta.” Though addressing a relatively contemporary issue (a student of color’s experience with Greek life, though specifically her joining a white sorority and the microaggressions/macroaggressions she encountered within, as well as the sense of difference and isolation, even alienation, she experienced as a sister), the piece nonetheless harkens back to the past, evoking images of the Antebellum South and the attendant practice of slavery.  Even the title itself calls forth not only the Mississippi Delta but the fertile soil of the region, which (unsurprisingly) became a center of cotton production, only fueling the demand for forced labor.  Beyond the institution of slavery, though, there are other striking images that recall previous times and other forms of patently racist horror and terror, the legacies of which still linger and threaten.  In such lines as “We wore white robes and sang to each other,” there is an unmistakable allusion to the Ku Klux Klan (32).  In other lines, such as “Washers / and dryers with my mom at the laundromat / growing up—my fingertips collecting coins / from in between the slits in the couch,” the issue of class also comes into play (32).  The issue of gender, too (as well as the sexism and misogyny entrenched in American society, no less so when intersected with race), is evoked in lines such as “I still don’t know who drew / a thick dick on my face with a Sharpie. / Didn’t wash off for days: faint phallic outline, / faint papyrus, another weak ghost” (33).  What is particularly pernicious, though, is the other sisters’ microaggressive words and actions, ones to which they presumably feel entitled in front of the speaker because of their sororal bond (e.g. “Another said, Memphafrica. They laughed”) (32).  Regardless of the specific memory recounted or issue addressed, however, Clark does so much with such adept word economy and effective poetic diction.  With arguably agricultural terminology such as “equipment,” “apparatus,” and “machinery,” she not only (and again) calls forth the history of exploitative, racist labor practices in the United States (whether slavery or sharecropping); she also implicates the exclusive sisterhood of which she is a member in its perpetuation of whiteness while also acknowledging the seductive allure of the white sorority (and, by extension) whiteness itself: “That privileged machinery / felt good” (emphasis mine) (33).

For all the moments of pain and suffering in Scorched Earth, there are also those of care, tenderness, and joy.  There are celebratory moments.  There are moments of Black joy and queer love.  Often occurring within the same piece as those of loss and morning, the embodiment of such moments nearly suggests an inextricable link between the former and the latter. 

For example, in the fittingly titled poem, “Broken Sestina Reaching for Black Joy,” the speaker admits, “I’ve been trying to write a poem about buried Black bodies, / but all I want to write about is Black joy and my pleasure / and Black love and Black lives that don’t end with viral death, / so I’ve stopped consuming the news” (62).  A few things to note here: though the piece does somewhat adhere to the form, the poem also (and often) breaks the pattern at the various points, reflecting the speaker’s own frustration at their inability to successfully write about Black joy.  In a gesture of ars poetica, the speaker suggests as much midway through the piece: “I picked the sestina for its obsessive listing / and twisting. I selected the sestina to probe a problem I can name / but can’t answer” (63).  Though there is indeed listing and twisting, there is also poetic repetition (however uneven, or broken) in the piece, suggesting a pattern anti-Black violence and death.  In the same vein, though, there is also Black imagination and pleasure.  There is reprieve, however brief: “the length of a tercet, an envoi sustained / with pleasure reaching for Black desire, / reaching for the transcendence of pain, / if possible. Is it possible?” (64)

Sad and painful at times but also irreverent and joyful, also sensual and erotic, Tiana Clark’s latest stands out not only for its raw vulnerability or emotional resonance but also (and especially) the level of craft employed.  This is an author who knows what she’s doing and why she’s doing it.  Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Scorched Earth.  Try to come away uninformed, unimpressed, unchanged.  I dare you.

Jonathan Fletcher holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University School of the Arts. His work has been featured in numerous literary journals and magazines, and he has won or placed in various literary contests. A Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction nominee, he won Northwestern University Press’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize contest in 2023, for which he will have his debut chapbook, This is My Body, published in 2025. Currently, he serves as a Zoeglossia Fellow and lives in San Antonio, Texas.

Tiana Clark holds a BA from Tennessee State University and an MFA from Vanderbilt University. Clark is the author of Scorched Earth (Washington Square Press, 2025); I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Clark is also the recipient of a 2019 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 2017 Furious Flower Poetry Center’s Gwendolyn Brooks Centennial Poetry Prize, and the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize.