With Scorched Earth, Tiana Clark has sculpted a collection for those who love literature and who wrestle with what it means to love themselves.
From the outset of the collection, it becomes clear that we are exploring life after personal apocalypse. Her prologue introduces the post-divorce context of the book while laying out the thematic journey with the closing couplet, “There is still some residue, some proof of puncture, / some scars you graze to remember the risk.” We examine the wreckage of divorce, gather what has been left behind, and take brave steps into the unknown, carrying our histories with us.
While these poems are unquestionably personal and vulnerable, they force the reader to reckon with the role of biography in poetry. Where does the poet fall on the spectrum of truth between a novelist and memoirist? For those familiar with Clark’s oeuvre, there are references to not only her previous collections, but also how the public has responded to her work. In the titular poem, “Scorched Earth,” Clark writes, “I get so tired when people ask me about this one / poem that I wrote. The truth is: I lied. / Did I have to be there for it to still hurt me? / Am I allowed to conjure the possibility of pain / to protect myself from the pain?” “Scorched Earth” is a response to Kara Walker’s print Buzzard’s Roost Pass, and within it, these lines illustrate how readers and writers can identify with and explore our own traumas through images, texts and experiences that are not our own.
Clark’s role as a literary educator is evident throughout, as well. The allusions in a single poem, such as “Broken Ode for the Epigraph,” would make an engaging and exciting reading list. Her conversational language and anecdotes pull readers in as though she’s recounting a story to an old friend, but then she’ll pull out a literary term like “duende” or “monostich,” reminding you that you are in the presence of someone who knows exactly what she’s doing with her words.
Clark’s obsession with literature mirrors her investigation of beauty: What does it mean to be beautiful in a society dominated by white beauty standards? What does it mean to be a poet in a tradition dominated by a white canon? The final section of the collection answers these questions by finding joy and desire outside of white, heteronormative expectations. With poems like “Broken Sestina Reaching for Black Joy” and “Queer Miracle,” Clark repurposes traditional English poetic forms to suit her own dreams, adhering to her own rules.
This is a collection that laughs at “confessional” as a derogatory term and embraces “too muchness” as a pure expression of the politicized body, history and art.
