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A review by brice_mo
Scorched Earth by Tiana Clark
5.0
Thanks to NetGalley and Atria for the ARC!
Throughout Tiana Clark’s Scorched Earth, the speaker leads readers through a range of emotional geographies, gradually terraforming the titular landscape from a site of devastation to one of preparation—in the same way that a fire may ready a field for the next season’s harvest.
It’s a breathless, wondrous collection of poems about the ferocity of Black, queer joy, and it’s immediately memorable for the strength of Clark’s voice.
Poems are often defined by a restrictive economy of language—a compulsion to remove everything absolutely unnecessary. Clark never does that, instead shaping the collection with opulent, celebratory, rambling language. It’s not chaotic, but rather evidence for how deeply we need language that is impractical—words that "accomplish" nothing.
Within the speaker’s world, it feels like the only language strong enough to hold all of life’s experiences is the language that wasn’t designed to do so. Clark dispenses with the precise and cold lexicon we use to distance ourselves from the world, and, in its stead, she playfully experiments with whatever will pull it closer. There’s a noted kinship here with Ross Gay’s work, and Clark’s self-identified “transgressive joy” will resonate with anyone who has read Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude or either Book of Delights. Simply put, the speaker writes as if true, muscular joy must be strong enough to embrace grief and hold it close.
As such, this is not a fluffy collection by any means. There’s some heavy content relating to divorce, racism, and sexuality, but it all seems rooted in the speaker’s refusal to allow the world to harden her. Its feels bold in its tenderness, particularly toward the speaker herself; each piece reads like a step closer to catharsis.
Poetry is an acquired taste, often to its detriment—reading a poem often only encourages the reader to read another poem. That isn’t the case here. Clark instead welcomes readers to reflect on their taste, sometimes interrogating poetry as a genre, and sometimes literally describing, well, taste. For example, in “After the Reading,” we see euphoric, sensorial descriptions of pulled pork and Diet Coke thrown into contrast with the interruptions of emotional abstraction. It is as if life’s “basest” pleasures offer the form that its complications resist. We must ask if we have cultivated the right appetites.
Scorched Earth is a collection I’m excited to revisit, and Tiana Clark’s work here is beautiful in how it invites readers to sit in a poem, take all the time they need, and—when they are ready—move more deeply into the world.
Throughout Tiana Clark’s Scorched Earth, the speaker leads readers through a range of emotional geographies, gradually terraforming the titular landscape from a site of devastation to one of preparation—in the same way that a fire may ready a field for the next season’s harvest.
It’s a breathless, wondrous collection of poems about the ferocity of Black, queer joy, and it’s immediately memorable for the strength of Clark’s voice.
Poems are often defined by a restrictive economy of language—a compulsion to remove everything absolutely unnecessary. Clark never does that, instead shaping the collection with opulent, celebratory, rambling language. It’s not chaotic, but rather evidence for how deeply we need language that is impractical—words that "accomplish" nothing.
Within the speaker’s world, it feels like the only language strong enough to hold all of life’s experiences is the language that wasn’t designed to do so. Clark dispenses with the precise and cold lexicon we use to distance ourselves from the world, and, in its stead, she playfully experiments with whatever will pull it closer. There’s a noted kinship here with Ross Gay’s work, and Clark’s self-identified “transgressive joy” will resonate with anyone who has read Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude or either Book of Delights. Simply put, the speaker writes as if true, muscular joy must be strong enough to embrace grief and hold it close.
As such, this is not a fluffy collection by any means. There’s some heavy content relating to divorce, racism, and sexuality, but it all seems rooted in the speaker’s refusal to allow the world to harden her. Its feels bold in its tenderness, particularly toward the speaker herself; each piece reads like a step closer to catharsis.
Poetry is an acquired taste, often to its detriment—reading a poem often only encourages the reader to read another poem. That isn’t the case here. Clark instead welcomes readers to reflect on their taste, sometimes interrogating poetry as a genre, and sometimes literally describing, well, taste. For example, in “After the Reading,” we see euphoric, sensorial descriptions of pulled pork and Diet Coke thrown into contrast with the interruptions of emotional abstraction. It is as if life’s “basest” pleasures offer the form that its complications resist. We must ask if we have cultivated the right appetites.
Scorched Earth is a collection I’m excited to revisit, and Tiana Clark’s work here is beautiful in how it invites readers to sit in a poem, take all the time they need, and—when they are ready—move more deeply into the world.