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I Can't Talk About the Trees Without the Blood
Winner of the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize
For poet Tiana Clark, trees will never be just trees. They will also and always be a row of gallows from which Black bodies once swung. This is an image that she cannot escape, but one that she has learned to lean into as she delves into personal and public histories, explicating memories and muses around race, elegy, family, and faith by making and breaking forms as well as probing mythology, literary history, her own ancestry, and, yes, even Rihanna. I Can’t Talk About the Trees without the Blood, because Tiana cannot engage with the physical and psychic landscape of the South without seeing the braided trauma of the broken past—she will always see blood on the leaves.
For poet Tiana Clark, trees will never be just trees. They will also and always be a row of gallows from which Black bodies once swung. This is an image that she cannot escape, but one that she has learned to lean into as she delves into personal and public histories, explicating memories and muses around race, elegy, family, and faith by making and breaking forms as well as probing mythology, literary history, her own ancestry, and, yes, even Rihanna. I Can’t Talk About the Trees without the Blood, because Tiana cannot engage with the physical and psychic landscape of the South without seeing the braided trauma of the broken past—she will always see blood on the leaves.
112 pages, Paperback
First published September 18, 2018
31 people are currently reading
1707 people want to read
About the author
Tiana Clark
13 books80 followersTiana Clark is the author of the poetry collection, I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and Equilibrium (Bull City Press, 2016), selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Clark is a winner for the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award (Claremont Graduate University), a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, and the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. She is a recipient of the 2021-2022 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship and 2019 Pushcart Prize. Clark is the 2017-2018 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. She is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Sewanee Writers' Conference, and Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Clark is a graduate of Vanderbilt University (M.F.A) and Tennessee State University (B.A.) where she studied Africana and Women's studies.
Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, Tin House Online, Kenyon Review, BuzzFeed News, American Poetry Review, Oxford American, The Best American Poetry 2022, and elsewhere. She is currently the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College.
Her second poetry collection, Scorched Earth, which moves between ruins and radical love will be published March 4, 2025. Clark is currently working on a memoir-in-essays, Begging to be Saved, reckoning with Black burnout, millennial divorce, faith, art making, and exploring historical methods of Black survival, which sold to Jenny Xu at Washington Square Press/Simon & Schuster.
Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, Tin House Online, Kenyon Review, BuzzFeed News, American Poetry Review, Oxford American, The Best American Poetry 2022, and elsewhere. She is currently the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College.
Her second poetry collection, Scorched Earth, which moves between ruins and radical love will be published March 4, 2025. Clark is currently working on a memoir-in-essays, Begging to be Saved, reckoning with Black burnout, millennial divorce, faith, art making, and exploring historical methods of Black survival, which sold to Jenny Xu at Washington Square Press/Simon & Schuster.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 112 reviews
August 8, 2020
Y'all, I'm really just mad at myself for not reading this sooner, because goodNESS. A rich, thick stew of a book I will definitely return to.
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April 7, 2025Everyone should read Tiana Clark. I think her prose is electric—and the layers on layers of references mixed with wry and accessible commentary mean every poem is worth more than a few reads.
On a personal note: I came to Clark’s canon backwards—I started with Scorched Earth and am working my way back to her earlier poems, starting with this collection. How interesting it is to view her life in (almost) regression. Not a negative critique by any means, but a reflection on where it seems her musings and personal life went after this collection based on what she chose to reveal in later works. It feels weirdly meta and intimate to read the struggles in this earlier collection related to her personal life that are changed in her later collection. I’ve not personally read many poets’ canons like this (I am usually a one-off collection reader) so I wonder if this scenario is normal for poetry readers and/or if this is unique to Clark’s ability to personalize the poems with slices of reflection. Either way, a unique scenario to me and it ironically deepened my appreciation of this collection’s poems.
On a personal note: I came to Clark’s canon backwards—I started with Scorched Earth and am working my way back to her earlier poems, starting with this collection. How interesting it is to view her life in (almost) regression. Not a negative critique by any means, but a reflection on where it seems her musings and personal life went after this collection based on what she chose to reveal in later works. It feels weirdly meta and intimate to read the struggles in this earlier collection related to her personal life that are changed in her later collection. I’ve not personally read many poets’ canons like this (I am usually a one-off collection reader) so I wonder if this scenario is normal for poetry readers and/or if this is unique to Clark’s ability to personalize the poems with slices of reflection. Either way, a unique scenario to me and it ironically deepened my appreciation of this collection’s poems.
March 10, 2020
So many incredible poems and lines in here. This is a collection that bears reflection, re-reading, repeating. The poem about having a conversation with her white mother-in-law about taking some family photographs on a plantation--Soil Horizon--was shattering. So glad I came across this book in an online article. A poet to watch, follow, and listen to with open ears.
From The Rime of Nina Simone:
"Yes. This:
I need to be here--in the workshop.
I must look them in the face
and tell them when their words
and worlds are making me uncomfortable.
Tell them when my chest tightens and flares up
when they try to conjure the other, a fantastic
field of fictitious black and brown bodies.
Tell them my body is real--not imagined,
not a prop or a sieve or a literary device.
Not foil. Not craft. Not carnal. Not chocolate.
Not mammy or mask or persona. Not opposite
of the white gaze. I must tell them that my:
lips/butt/haircurlers are mine/urban/slang/long
fingernails/arrested/dialectic are mine/burning
erotic hottentot/blue bandanna/Beyoncé/like-like
liquor/blasting the classroom with my noisy stereo-
types, shouting: I. A. Here. You cannot write
around me. The periphery is also mine. I'm not
afraid to take up space I need to survive.
I'm not afraid to write what I need to survive."
From The Rime of Nina Simone:
"Yes. This:
I need to be here--in the workshop.
I must look them in the face
and tell them when their words
and worlds are making me uncomfortable.
Tell them when my chest tightens and flares up
when they try to conjure the other, a fantastic
field of fictitious black and brown bodies.
Tell them my body is real--not imagined,
not a prop or a sieve or a literary device.
Not foil. Not craft. Not carnal. Not chocolate.
Not mammy or mask or persona. Not opposite
of the white gaze. I must tell them that my:
lips/butt/haircurlers are mine/urban/slang/long
fingernails/arrested/dialectic are mine/burning
erotic hottentot/blue bandanna/Beyoncé/like-like
liquor/blasting the classroom with my noisy stereo-
types, shouting: I. A. Here. You cannot write
around me. The periphery is also mine. I'm not
afraid to take up space I need to survive.
I'm not afraid to write what I need to survive."
January 3, 2019
This is the second book I’ve read by Tiana Clark. I love her style, but I’m also convinced she’s one of our most important contemporary poets. Every poem is a knockout.
April 18, 2019
So wonderful. I feel lucky to be living in the time of Tiana Clark.
July 12, 2022
i read this through the library! i want to revisit and revisit this collection and also write all over it so perhaps i should buy it now
December 2, 2018
THIS REVIEW FIRST APPEARED IN THE ADIRONDACK REVIEW
I Can’t Talk About The Trees Without The Blood is a gripping collection of poetry. Clark is adroit at bringing the reader into the scenes she paints with words. Not all writers are capable of this, and the fact that Clark employs it in a seamless way gives credence to the reasons why her work is worth reading.
In “Soil Horizon,” Clark is called by her white mother-in-law to a Tennessee plantation for a family portrait. The mother-in-law sees the taking of the portrait on the plantation as an act of redeeming the past. Clark writes that the history of the plantation is covered up by its present usage, “...now it is sold out for summer weddings with sweating mint juleps in silver cups, cannons burst with weekend reenactments, and photo shoots for graduation, pregnant couples, and my new family.” For Clark, history cannot be wiped clean. She writes, “How do we stand on the dead and smile? I carry so many black souls in my skin, sometimes I swear it vibrates, like a tuning fork when struck.” Clark does not appear interested in redemption but in remembering black lives affected by the weight of slavery.
In the collection, Clark writes about Phillis Wheatley, Emmett Till, Trayvon Martin, and Kalief Browder with the same clarity and urgency that she writes about her life. This continuum conflates personal history with broader social history, reminding us that the two are not mutually exclusive.
When I think of Trayvon Martin, I think of Emmett Till, when I think of Emmett Till, I
think of young, black men in the South, then I think of young, white men in the South, I
think of my husband, who is white, born and raised in Franklin, TN. I think of how when
he tries to hold my hand, sometimes I pull away and not because I don’t love him, but
because I’m alert… So when I think about a post-racial America, I don’t—because the
trees in the South have strange fruit histories.
(“The Ayes Have It”)
Clark stays with the pain that comes with living in a black body in America. This is vividly depicted in “The Rime of Nina Simone,” a persona poem that is the centerpiece of the collection. In the poem, Clark brings back Simone from the dead. They meet on the campus where Clark is working toward her MFA. In the conversation, Simone asks, “Do they want you...or your black pain?” And, “Why do you keep panting & hunting black hurt, black scars like a slave-breaker? Why scratch the white page, a master, for old blood?” Clark answers,
Because I listen to the trees humming through the poplar leaves and Southern magnolias.
Bloated faces, these beauteous forms, still swinging, limp pendulum, waxy bleach-white
blooms, egg whites inside hardboiled eyes sway and rock, roll forward, fragrant. I’m
ready to find the ruined churches.
She is describing lynching here, terror against the black body that involved trees and blood. The interrogation is not to dissuade Clark from writing about her pain or black pain (Clark tells Simone that she needs to confront her white classmates “...when they try to conjure the other, a fantastic field of fictitious black and brown bodies”) but to empower her. Simone encourages her on this path,
It’s not enough for you to be young, gifted, black and angry or write about the body, The
body, The body. The body… she says, mocking me with her hands, then points her
diaphanous finger in my face—You have to stay mad your whole damn life. You have to
make love to the damage in your mind—return to the throbbing meadow you know will
pang when you enter the middle of its wild scrape.
Clark enters the classroom “bewitched—ready to flame…” after the talk with Simone. The pain does not swallow her because she writes and talks about it in rooted ways.
The theme of blood and trees shows up in several of the poems, including “First Blood.” The poem is a recollection about climbing a tree with childhood white male friends and attempting to pee like a boy but peeing on the self. Clark moves past the shame of this moment, “After then, I didn’t play with the white boys anymore. It did not matter. I would soon be all woman. I would soon know about the blood.” This poem and others of the kind remind one of the poems of Lucille Clifton that talk about womanhood. In this way, Clark is carrying the mantle of Clifton and other great black female poets that preceded her.
Some of the poems talk about the absence of a father, “My daddy is what is always at stake in my work. I want to know if he is still alive—if he thinks of me as often as I think of him” (“In the Middle of Things”). Some of the weight of the absence is lifted by the presence of a mother. In “Mother Driving Away After Christmas,” Clark imagines that her mother is not alone because “Other cars swim around her silence like plump, metal fish…” and ends the poem by referencing when she was pregnant with her, “her one good thing inside this hurt, traveling home.” In a similar fashion, Clark’s poems give birth to feelings tied to the pain of history, while making something of it. Nina Simone would agree with this and more.
The collection is heartfelt and serious primarily in how it uses history, the personal and social, in poetic form infused with emotions and intelligence. The poems speak to the past—to what is worth remembering because it makes us who we are. This brave endeavor not only requires an adequate command of history but the wit to bear the soul at each teachable moment. After all, seeking and telling the truth is an arduous but necessary task, and those who do it in a way that says all of us can and should do it, deserve recognition. For this, we are grateful to Tiana Clark and must read her work.
I Can’t Talk About The Trees Without The Blood is a gripping collection of poetry. Clark is adroit at bringing the reader into the scenes she paints with words. Not all writers are capable of this, and the fact that Clark employs it in a seamless way gives credence to the reasons why her work is worth reading.
In “Soil Horizon,” Clark is called by her white mother-in-law to a Tennessee plantation for a family portrait. The mother-in-law sees the taking of the portrait on the plantation as an act of redeeming the past. Clark writes that the history of the plantation is covered up by its present usage, “...now it is sold out for summer weddings with sweating mint juleps in silver cups, cannons burst with weekend reenactments, and photo shoots for graduation, pregnant couples, and my new family.” For Clark, history cannot be wiped clean. She writes, “How do we stand on the dead and smile? I carry so many black souls in my skin, sometimes I swear it vibrates, like a tuning fork when struck.” Clark does not appear interested in redemption but in remembering black lives affected by the weight of slavery.
In the collection, Clark writes about Phillis Wheatley, Emmett Till, Trayvon Martin, and Kalief Browder with the same clarity and urgency that she writes about her life. This continuum conflates personal history with broader social history, reminding us that the two are not mutually exclusive.
When I think of Trayvon Martin, I think of Emmett Till, when I think of Emmett Till, I
think of young, black men in the South, then I think of young, white men in the South, I
think of my husband, who is white, born and raised in Franklin, TN. I think of how when
he tries to hold my hand, sometimes I pull away and not because I don’t love him, but
because I’m alert… So when I think about a post-racial America, I don’t—because the
trees in the South have strange fruit histories.
(“The Ayes Have It”)
Clark stays with the pain that comes with living in a black body in America. This is vividly depicted in “The Rime of Nina Simone,” a persona poem that is the centerpiece of the collection. In the poem, Clark brings back Simone from the dead. They meet on the campus where Clark is working toward her MFA. In the conversation, Simone asks, “Do they want you...or your black pain?” And, “Why do you keep panting & hunting black hurt, black scars like a slave-breaker? Why scratch the white page, a master, for old blood?” Clark answers,
Because I listen to the trees humming through the poplar leaves and Southern magnolias.
Bloated faces, these beauteous forms, still swinging, limp pendulum, waxy bleach-white
blooms, egg whites inside hardboiled eyes sway and rock, roll forward, fragrant. I’m
ready to find the ruined churches.
She is describing lynching here, terror against the black body that involved trees and blood. The interrogation is not to dissuade Clark from writing about her pain or black pain (Clark tells Simone that she needs to confront her white classmates “...when they try to conjure the other, a fantastic field of fictitious black and brown bodies”) but to empower her. Simone encourages her on this path,
It’s not enough for you to be young, gifted, black and angry or write about the body, The
body, The body. The body… she says, mocking me with her hands, then points her
diaphanous finger in my face—You have to stay mad your whole damn life. You have to
make love to the damage in your mind—return to the throbbing meadow you know will
pang when you enter the middle of its wild scrape.
Clark enters the classroom “bewitched—ready to flame…” after the talk with Simone. The pain does not swallow her because she writes and talks about it in rooted ways.
The theme of blood and trees shows up in several of the poems, including “First Blood.” The poem is a recollection about climbing a tree with childhood white male friends and attempting to pee like a boy but peeing on the self. Clark moves past the shame of this moment, “After then, I didn’t play with the white boys anymore. It did not matter. I would soon be all woman. I would soon know about the blood.” This poem and others of the kind remind one of the poems of Lucille Clifton that talk about womanhood. In this way, Clark is carrying the mantle of Clifton and other great black female poets that preceded her.
Some of the poems talk about the absence of a father, “My daddy is what is always at stake in my work. I want to know if he is still alive—if he thinks of me as often as I think of him” (“In the Middle of Things”). Some of the weight of the absence is lifted by the presence of a mother. In “Mother Driving Away After Christmas,” Clark imagines that her mother is not alone because “Other cars swim around her silence like plump, metal fish…” and ends the poem by referencing when she was pregnant with her, “her one good thing inside this hurt, traveling home.” In a similar fashion, Clark’s poems give birth to feelings tied to the pain of history, while making something of it. Nina Simone would agree with this and more.
The collection is heartfelt and serious primarily in how it uses history, the personal and social, in poetic form infused with emotions and intelligence. The poems speak to the past—to what is worth remembering because it makes us who we are. This brave endeavor not only requires an adequate command of history but the wit to bear the soul at each teachable moment. After all, seeking and telling the truth is an arduous but necessary task, and those who do it in a way that says all of us can and should do it, deserve recognition. For this, we are grateful to Tiana Clark and must read her work.
February 8, 2019
Intensely powerful, personal poems about race and racism. This blew me away.
January 2, 2023
i started this book last year so i’m kinda cheating but i finished it today so whatever.
yeah this is the best book of poetry i’ve ever read in my life. sarah gave this to me for my birthday in 2022 and i continuously found myself shocked at how visceral the poems felt. the magnitude of the language. the violence. the sickening and tragic beauty of blackness, brownness, sex, intimacy, femininity, pain.
there were so many poems here i struggled to finish because i just felt queasy with how relatable they were. as a poet myself, “The Rime of Nina Simone” was literally triggering. like so fucking triggering. it was phenomenal.
my favorite kind of poems are the ones who are unabashedly loud and occupying. tiana clark writes in such a way that is difficult to look away from. she is commanding, powerful, angry, black, and woman. she is magical, in every sense of the word. she’s the kind of writer you want to keep on your body at all times in case inspiration strikes. in case you need some thing and some one to push you to be greater.
“Bewitched—ready to flame: I enter the room— / bursting.”
i could not recommend a book of poetry more.
yeah this is the best book of poetry i’ve ever read in my life. sarah gave this to me for my birthday in 2022 and i continuously found myself shocked at how visceral the poems felt. the magnitude of the language. the violence. the sickening and tragic beauty of blackness, brownness, sex, intimacy, femininity, pain.
there were so many poems here i struggled to finish because i just felt queasy with how relatable they were. as a poet myself, “The Rime of Nina Simone” was literally triggering. like so fucking triggering. it was phenomenal.
my favorite kind of poems are the ones who are unabashedly loud and occupying. tiana clark writes in such a way that is difficult to look away from. she is commanding, powerful, angry, black, and woman. she is magical, in every sense of the word. she’s the kind of writer you want to keep on your body at all times in case inspiration strikes. in case you need some thing and some one to push you to be greater.
“Bewitched—ready to flame: I enter the room— / bursting.”
i could not recommend a book of poetry more.
April 3, 2019
I loved this the first time I read it, and I love it even more after reading it again and getting ready to teach it to my Introduction to Creative Writing students. This is such a rich collection, and it definitely rewards rereading.
October 7, 2018
Wow Tiana SNAPPED. An amazing debut collection.
July 23, 2019
Tiana Clark's I Can't Talk About the Trees Without the Blood is an absolutely gorgeous and impactful poetry collection. From the epic "The Rime of Nina Simone" to her meditations on her interracial marriage—in poems like "After Amistad," on watching the film beside him, and "Soul Horizon," where her husband's mother wants to take the family portrait at a plantation—Clark's poems are incredible, lyrical, and gorgeous. She ruminates on the historic trauma that she cannot escape, through literary history, through Rihanna, through poems of mourning, childhood bullies, sexual assault, through the story of institutionalized segregation and lasting racism captured in introduction poem "Nashville." Clark's poetry is breath-taking on every page. It's in the running for one of my favorite reads of the year.
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January 2, 2020I wrote a review of this collection, which you can read at Full-Stop.net. Here is the first sentence:
Tiana Clark’s I Can’t Talk about the Trees without the Blood explores an ongoing epiphanic challenge — that we can’t fully appreciate the beauty of the world without also fully acknowledging its pain.
http://www.full-stop.net/2020/01/02/r...
Tiana Clark’s I Can’t Talk about the Trees without the Blood explores an ongoing epiphanic challenge — that we can’t fully appreciate the beauty of the world without also fully acknowledging its pain.
http://www.full-stop.net/2020/01/02/r...
June 18, 2020
Wow. It's been a long time since I have been so moved by contemporary poetry. This book hits you in the gut. It's excellently written. I feel like I will have to reread this several times to fully catch everything. Every word counts. The spacing is so unique, it's like mini poems within poems. Tiana Clark is an incredible poet. This is a necessary read. She dives into very hard topics like racism and it is so intense and beautifully articulated. I checked this out from the library, but now I want to buy it- because it's a masterpiece that I will reread again and again.
December 16, 2021
For me, one of the ironic blessings of the Covid pandemic has been rediscovering and wantonly indulging my love of poetry. I hear Tracy K. Smith’s soft, earthy caress of a voice in my head, her measured, yet searingly vulnerable dance of the mind and heart. I cry for Natasha Tretheway’s sorrow laid bare beside her rage. Lucille Clifton, Araceli’s Girmay, Ada Limoncellos
June 19, 2019
Very good writer. I didn’t like all of these poems, but I enjoyed most, and there were a few that were pretty amazing.
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June 29, 2020Stunning, gorgeous, and smart. I was hand-sold this in the Nashville Bookshop this past February right before the pandemic. So glad I own this collection so I can revisit it again.
May 3, 2021
A unique and vivid portrayal of black trauma and personal pain. The centerpiece and star, if you're looking to read just one of her poems, would undoubtedly seem to be "The Rime of Nina Simone."
December 18, 2023
Rating: 5/5
Art in all its forms, the struggle of not just writing about black pain while also desperately needing to give voice to it, and revisiting the past all come to brilliant effect in this poetry collection.
Art in all its forms, the struggle of not just writing about black pain while also desperately needing to give voice to it, and revisiting the past all come to brilliant effect in this poetry collection.
July 19, 2021
One of my favorite new poets. I love the quality, the passion, the form and the technique in this book. I can read it again and again.
January 27, 2019
A powerful collection - master craftsmanship, brilliant use of language while tackling raw, personal subjects with courage.Clark's work opens up her experience as a mixed-race, female creator in an America where it's still not safe to be any of those things. The collection opens with a boom with these first lines from "Nashville:"
is hot chicken on sopping white bread with green pickle
chips - sour to balance prismatic, flame-colored spice
for white people. Or, rather, white people now curate hot
chicken for $16 and two farm-to-table sides, or maybe
they've hungered fried heat and grease from black food
and milk - but didn't want to drive to Jefferson Street or
don't know about the history of Jefferson Street or Hell's
Half Acre, north of downtown.
And thus begins the story of how black neighborhoods sprung up on the fringe of white society after the civil war, rich with culture until the "improvements" of the freeway split them in two, combined with her personal experience of walking down the street with her white husband and being harassed in modern times.
What's it like to have a family portrait taken at a plantation, on the graves of Confederate soldiers and slaves? To meet the ghost of Nina Simone? To re-imagine the slave crossing and connect the ancient, African past with the present in the open?
The subject matter cuts deep, but its Clark's mastery of construction,meter, language and experimentation that makes these poems really stick. Every poem made me want to grab a highlighter to capture a treasure, which was a problem as this was a library book. I'll be buying this one for my permanent collection and lots of savory re-reading.
is hot chicken on sopping white bread with green pickle
chips - sour to balance prismatic, flame-colored spice
for white people. Or, rather, white people now curate hot
chicken for $16 and two farm-to-table sides, or maybe
they've hungered fried heat and grease from black food
and milk - but didn't want to drive to Jefferson Street or
don't know about the history of Jefferson Street or Hell's
Half Acre, north of downtown.
And thus begins the story of how black neighborhoods sprung up on the fringe of white society after the civil war, rich with culture until the "improvements" of the freeway split them in two, combined with her personal experience of walking down the street with her white husband and being harassed in modern times.
What's it like to have a family portrait taken at a plantation, on the graves of Confederate soldiers and slaves? To meet the ghost of Nina Simone? To re-imagine the slave crossing and connect the ancient, African past with the present in the open?
The subject matter cuts deep, but its Clark's mastery of construction,meter, language and experimentation that makes these poems really stick. Every poem made me want to grab a highlighter to capture a treasure, which was a problem as this was a library book. I'll be buying this one for my permanent collection and lots of savory re-reading.
February 20, 2021
“all I hear is your name falling / & beating Kalief Kalief KaliefKaliefKalief / this is such a poor offering but I am pouring it on the ground / like good rain & whatever softens the earth is your name / whatever might grow from that darkening bright spot is your name…
“& Kalief / what is there to say / after so much rain / the ground is swollen with your name”
— from “800 Days: Libation”
TITLE—I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood
AUTHOR—Tiana Clark
PUBLISHED—2018
“How do we stand on the dead and smile? I carry so many black souls / in my skin, sometimes I swear it vibrates, like a tuning fork when struck.” — from “Soil Horizon”
GENRE—poetry
MAIN THEMES—the Black experience, Black culture, biracial identity, sex, racism, the South, Christianity, parental relationships, art, trauma
“I was crushed. I am crushing / the flood, overwhelming. What now? / There is a dead cockroach in the corner. / I won’t pick it up. I keep sweeping / (around) / the thing on the floor.” — from “Dead Bug”
WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
CHARACTERS—n/a
PLOT—n/a
BONUS ELEMENT/S— the poem after Nina Simone (one of my favorite musicians) was my favorite! I also loved the poem about Kalief Browder 😔, and “Soil Horizon” and “Dead Bug.”
PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
These poems were definitely not a comfortable read but Clark’s voice, raw feeling, and brutal forthrightness along with her gorgeous command of language and poetic structure made the journey well worth the pain.
“You have to stay mad / your whole damn life.” — from “The Rime of Nina Simone”
TW // racism, racial slurs, sexual assault, sexual content, sexual violence, religious bigotry
Further Reading—
- Equilibrium, by Tiana Clark
- Collected Poems: 1950-2012, by Adrienne Rich
- Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine
- In the Mecca, by Gwendolyn Brooks
- The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks
- Complete Writings, by Phillis Wheatley
April 7, 2020
i’m literally exhausted by how many poetry books i’ve read recently that center the white gaze in depicting black culture, identity, and most significantly—pain. this work is not much different though the author does address grappling with the white gaze at points in the collection (yet adds notes at the end of the collection specifically to explain black cultural references to white folks).
i really wanted to love this collection but there was nothing here for me. i love that the cover is a piece of art from poet Terrance Hayes, but other than that, I don’t have much positive to say. I am interested in reading the poet’s other work to get a better sense of her range. I appreciated the craft and form of some pieces and wonder how the author might apply that to other types of stories.
i really wanted to love this collection but there was nothing here for me. i love that the cover is a piece of art from poet Terrance Hayes, but other than that, I don’t have much positive to say. I am interested in reading the poet’s other work to get a better sense of her range. I appreciated the craft and form of some pieces and wonder how the author might apply that to other types of stories.
September 22, 2018
Many of these poems left me speechless. I usually read a book of poetry in about two days, but this one begged to be read slowly so I could digest everything.
March 6, 2019
Read my full review here: https://www.usi.edu/sir/reviews/the-m...
December 12, 2019
"The Rime of Nina Simone" is one of the best poems I've read in a long time.
March 19, 2020
A remarkably personal work on biracial identity, interracial marriage, and the looming shadow cast by the legacy of American race policy over one American life. Clark comes to topics as varied as conceding self-consciousness over holding her white husband's hand (especially in the South), a loving, if fraught relationship with a black mother and an (absent white) father, and rape with an honesty that is frequently uncomfortable. I think a reader comes away knowing she has very clearly not sought peace with her subjects, but catharsis for herself.
There is so much to recommend-the imagined correspondence of church friends Obour Tanner and Phyllis Wheatley (only Phyllis' letters to Tanner are extant) demonstrates an inventiveness to be envied. Arguably the collection's best work is herein:
I'm a savage. There is savage-me, inside, wild-thick as sin, so much my soul/is clabbered, but there is a Change, I sense, inside my curdled mess, Christ hung/
and crucified in me, daily, a Saving Change. The ship. Do you feel the ship, pitching, /sometimes, inside the skin under your skin...
Remember the ships
that brought us over the bent world. Let us praise these wooden beasts that saved the/the evil beasts of us...
-from "Conversation With Phyllis Wheatley #14"
This, from "Where the Fired Body is Porous," of a white lover:
...
He is reaching for my kitchen.
Unruly secret at the nape of my neck.
Hush now—
: All those gleaming pots and pans.
: All those cabinets I keep shut. Hush.
I am undone and open.
No order is here/ can’t find nuthin’ back there/ except
a little me/ in a chair by the stove:
hot comb on the black burner, another red tornado.
Mama standing,
bowing my head downward—bending me
into a black comma.
Pressing my hair—smooth.
Holding back my ears as I hold back my breath.
Gettin’ cooked. Always afraid mama
would burn me
...
--------
Other faves include the extremely distrubing "Dead Bug"; "BBHMM," after Rihanna, admiringly; and "Ways to Be Saved"- Number 5 is, simply, "Solange." (You don't need to be a "poetry expert" to enjoy this work-while the explanation of "the kitchen" is one I might have left certain folk to dig up on their own, I really appreciate the copious notes in back, which explains much that might be unclear or necessary to know for understanding the work.) Check her out on YouTube-she is an extremely moving reader and there are plenty of vids of her reading there. And pick this one up-I hate that I've gotten to it two years late.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIF9d...
There is so much to recommend-the imagined correspondence of church friends Obour Tanner and Phyllis Wheatley (only Phyllis' letters to Tanner are extant) demonstrates an inventiveness to be envied. Arguably the collection's best work is herein:
I'm a savage. There is savage-me, inside, wild-thick as sin, so much my soul/is clabbered, but there is a Change, I sense, inside my curdled mess, Christ hung/
and crucified in me, daily, a Saving Change. The ship. Do you feel the ship, pitching, /sometimes, inside the skin under your skin...
Remember the ships
that brought us over the bent world. Let us praise these wooden beasts that saved the/the evil beasts of us...
-from "Conversation With Phyllis Wheatley #14"
This, from "Where the Fired Body is Porous," of a white lover:
...
He is reaching for my kitchen.
Unruly secret at the nape of my neck.
Hush now—
: All those gleaming pots and pans.
: All those cabinets I keep shut. Hush.
I am undone and open.
No order is here/ can’t find nuthin’ back there/ except
a little me/ in a chair by the stove:
hot comb on the black burner, another red tornado.
Mama standing,
bowing my head downward—bending me
into a black comma.
Pressing my hair—smooth.
Holding back my ears as I hold back my breath.
Gettin’ cooked. Always afraid mama
would burn me
...
--------
Other faves include the extremely distrubing "Dead Bug"; "BBHMM," after Rihanna, admiringly; and "Ways to Be Saved"- Number 5 is, simply, "Solange." (You don't need to be a "poetry expert" to enjoy this work-while the explanation of "the kitchen" is one I might have left certain folk to dig up on their own, I really appreciate the copious notes in back, which explains much that might be unclear or necessary to know for understanding the work.) Check her out on YouTube-she is an extremely moving reader and there are plenty of vids of her reading there. And pick this one up-I hate that I've gotten to it two years late.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIF9d...
March 11, 2021
Trying to review poetry always reminds me that I'm not sure I have the literary analytical skills necessary to do it justice - so this is really more a reflection on my experience reading Clark's work. Her work feels deeply personal - the opening poem, Nashville, speaks to the way the city was divided and the Black community separated by the construction of interstates, while also examining the way Black culture was appropriated - all of which seems more commentary rather than personal until she ties it together with someone yelling a racial slur at her husband and she pulls on all the threads. Several other poems that stood out for me in this excellent collection include Soil Horizon - speaks to request from her mother-in-law to take family pictures at a nearby plantation, The Ayes Have it (those ending lines had me setting the book down so I could spend time dwelling on them), and Mother Driving Away After Christmas - so evocative you feel like you are in the car with her mother.
From a style/format perspective -- often times when I read poetry that works with spacing, line breaks, punctuation, etc - I don't get a clear impact of those decisions in my reading experience. With this collection, those elements crafted and contributed to my reading experience - it made me pause at what seemed like exactly the right moment, linger at times, and speed up when the rhythm of the language and structure compelled me forward. It was impressive to see Clark's choices have such a significant impact on my reading experience.
At the end of the collection, there are notes on some of the poems. In hindsight, I wish I had seen the notes before I started reading. In a few cases, reading the note about the poem would have given me additional context that would have impacted my reading of the work.
This is an excellent collection - one well worth taking your time with and savoring - and one I wish more people were talking about.
From a style/format perspective -- often times when I read poetry that works with spacing, line breaks, punctuation, etc - I don't get a clear impact of those decisions in my reading experience. With this collection, those elements crafted and contributed to my reading experience - it made me pause at what seemed like exactly the right moment, linger at times, and speed up when the rhythm of the language and structure compelled me forward. It was impressive to see Clark's choices have such a significant impact on my reading experience.
At the end of the collection, there are notes on some of the poems. In hindsight, I wish I had seen the notes before I started reading. In a few cases, reading the note about the poem would have given me additional context that would have impacted my reading of the work.
This is an excellent collection - one well worth taking your time with and savoring - and one I wish more people were talking about.
February 18, 2025
I don’t see the point in writing negative reviews about an individual poetry collection, unless it was completely forgettable (which this was not).
Grace lent me her copy of Tiana Clark’s collection, and it was a joy to read it - not just because of the power of the work itself, but the ability to see G’s annotations. So, thank you for that.
If you are looking for a poetry collection that is in conversation with the impact of the American dream on black lives, this is the piece for you. It’s heartfelt, sturdy, and linguistically spinning through broad concepts of race, gender, and power. Often beautiful, occasionally gut punching, it’s worth a first, second, and third read. The sections divide into “i can’t talk” “about the trees” “without the blood,” and each section carries a heart that easily folds into the whole.
Cottonmouth is a standout, along with The Rime of Nina Simone.
Insofar as organization - brilliant example of how thoughtfully you can place poems next to each other to build momentum and rhythm. Each piece sharpens the next and enhances the overall relief being carved out by the collection and author.
I love confessional poetry, especially when it feels like I’ve learned so much but know nothing about the person who’s done it. It’s a skill.
Bonus: I read this over the course of a month wherein I’ve been frequenting my local wine bar and flirting (?) with the owner, the results of which have been hand-me-down New Yorkers, two free glasses of wine, and a dram of American whiskey (“because no one here is ordering it”). I have begun reapplying my deodorant and perfume before heading over. And I shall continue on with my behavior (sitting pretty, quietly reading) until I am forced to explain that I cannot sleep with the wine man, because then he would just be another bug in the jar. Unfortunate, honestly.
Grace lent me her copy of Tiana Clark’s collection, and it was a joy to read it - not just because of the power of the work itself, but the ability to see G’s annotations. So, thank you for that.
If you are looking for a poetry collection that is in conversation with the impact of the American dream on black lives, this is the piece for you. It’s heartfelt, sturdy, and linguistically spinning through broad concepts of race, gender, and power. Often beautiful, occasionally gut punching, it’s worth a first, second, and third read. The sections divide into “i can’t talk” “about the trees” “without the blood,” and each section carries a heart that easily folds into the whole.
Cottonmouth is a standout, along with The Rime of Nina Simone.
Insofar as organization - brilliant example of how thoughtfully you can place poems next to each other to build momentum and rhythm. Each piece sharpens the next and enhances the overall relief being carved out by the collection and author.
I love confessional poetry, especially when it feels like I’ve learned so much but know nothing about the person who’s done it. It’s a skill.
Bonus: I read this over the course of a month wherein I’ve been frequenting my local wine bar and flirting (?) with the owner, the results of which have been hand-me-down New Yorkers, two free glasses of wine, and a dram of American whiskey (“because no one here is ordering it”). I have begun reapplying my deodorant and perfume before heading over. And I shall continue on with my behavior (sitting pretty, quietly reading) until I am forced to explain that I cannot sleep with the wine man, because then he would just be another bug in the jar. Unfortunate, honestly.
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