Archive of Style

Poet, critic, and activist Cheryl Clarke was born in Washington, DC. She earned her BA from Howard University and her MA and PhD from Rutgers University. Clarke is the author of five collections of poetry: Narratives: Poems in the Tradition of Black Women (1983), Living as a Lesbian (1986), Humid Pitch (1989), Experimental Love (1993), and By My Precise Haircut (2016), which won a Hilary Tham Capital Competition. She wrote the critical study “After Mecca”: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement (2005), and a volume collecting her poetry and prose was published as The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry of Cheryl Clarke, 1980–2005 (2006). Many of Clarke’s most influential essays, including “Lesbianism: an Act of Resistance” and “The Failure to Transform: Homophobia in the Black Community,” first appeared in landmark publications such as This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981) and Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (1983). Clarke served as editor for Conditions, an influential journal of lesbian feminist literature. All of Clarke’s writings advocate for queer communities of color, paying attention to the social implications of language and labels and the possibilities of art and activism to stage resistance to dominant culture. According to Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who co-organized a conference on Clarke at Rutgers in 2013, “Cheryl Clarke’s life and work offer an enduring rejection of straightness and a constant reorientation to alternative space.” Clarke was an influential administrator and teacher at Rutgers for more than 40 years. She founded the Office of Diverse Community Affairs and Lesbian-Gay Concerns, which became the Office of Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities, and retired as the Livingstone Dean of Students in 2013. For her service to LGBTQ communities, Clarke received a David Kessler Award. She currently lives in Hobart, New York, where she owns and operates Blenheim Hill Books with her partner, Barbara J. Balliet.

Targets 2019
History
On Their Way to Life
Targets
Emergency Surgery
depth in a two dimensional space
What It Take
Brief Interval /
Legacy/Legends Nephew 2016
lipstick corn
What Does It Mean?
Woman Ends Her Life: Elegy
Tercet
Reckless Domesticity
Living as a lesbian in the archive of style
Juanita’ (for D.C.)
By My Precise Haircut 2016
Mandela: 12-15-2013
A Capital Car Chase
Women of Letters
Oh, Memory Fatal and Fateful
A Sister’s Lament . . .
Songs of Longing
the empire
A Child Die
The Days of Good Looks: Prose And Poetry 1980-2000 (2005)
Living as a lesbian underground, fin de siÈcle
Billie Holiday
Dreams of South Africa
 james dean longing
Experimental Love (1993)
War Crazy Men
Greta Garbo Movement
passing
All Souls’ Day
Flowers of Puerto Rico Buttons
An Epitaph
Rondeau
Make-up
Remember the Voyage
Arroyo Querida
Hard
Living as a Lesbian at 45
Najeeb (1974-1989)
Veronica Ashley Wood, My Niece
Hanging Tough in the Persian Gulf: Elegy
an old woman muses from her basement
A Poet’s Death
Humid Pitch (1989)
Bulletin
The Day Sam Cooke Died
Sisters Part
party pants (from Epic of Song)
Frances Michael
Erol
Ilona of Hickory
No Place
Living As a Lesbian (1986)
14th Street
wearing my cap backwards
The woman who raised me
living as a lesbian on the make
journal entry: sisters
for my mother, 1979
palm leaf of Mary Magdalene
I come to the city
freedom flesh
Indira
no more encomiums
Intimacy no luxury
Vicki and Daphne
Fall journal entry: 1983
nothing
sexual preference
Miami: 1980
living as a lesbian underground a futuristic fantasy
an exile I have loved
sister of famous artist brother
Pueblo Bonito
jazz poem for Morristown, N.J.
Intimacy no luxury
marimba
Kittatinny
living as a lesbian at 35
Narratives: poems in the tradition of black women 1982
hair: a narrative
Mavis writes in her journal
The Older American
Fathers
April 4, 1968: Washington, D.C.
The moon in cancer
Gail
the johnny cake
Of Althea and Flaxie
NEW POEMS
Foreword to New Poems
Grade Schooler Scholar Jo’burg, 2016
Never Any Proof Entry
Back seat
Juggernaut
Betty Carter (1929-1998)
The message Cost
Signs of the Times Sandy Bland
Sonnet for the Last Night Spring 2022
journal entry
Emanuel 9 2015: their influence was wide
Acknowledgements