‘Thick With Trouble’ Review: Beauty in the Outskirts of the Ordinary

Amber McBride excels as both a poet and a novelist — in 2021, she was nominated for a National Book Award For Young People’s Literature for her novel-in-verse, “Me (Moth).” In her latest release, “Thick With Trouble,” the young poet continues this skillful trend, spinning a beautiful web of interconnected pieces relating to her identity as a Black woman in the modern era.

The collection is separated into five parts, or “Tarot Cards,” which is also the subject of the book’s first poem: “Roll Call: New Tarot Names For Black Girls.” In this poem, McBride introduces motifs seen throughout the book. The line “Black girl will Sin with anything with half a heartbeat” already contains two: The theme of sin and the theme of the shame attributed to her sexuality.

The first building block of McBride’s brilliant collection is these motifs, used sparingly to deepen the layers of meaning in each poem. In “Skull Hill Baptist Church,” for example, McBride describes a sermon: “the Black pastor’s spittle sprayed as he said, / & women have Sinned more than most. Which means Black women because white / doesn't live within these walls.” Through unorthodox syntax, McBride communicates that the pastor is not only referencing the Garden of Eden. Instead, the blatant misogyny transforms into a message demeaning Black women for their sexuality, all through a callback to the very first poem.

McBride ends the poem with “Pastor watches me, / like he knows what I do / to myself at night.” This ending pinpoints the shame infused into this poem, amplified by McBride’s deft repetition of this motif. Throughout, McBride utilizes these recurring ideas to great success; one of the book’s strengths is how effectively the motifs amplify the message of condemning oppression.

Another of McBride’s strengths is her ability to craft powerful themes through quiet restraint. Take for example “Girls Wanted (Paint Me),” in which McBride describes an “ideal” girl.

“Give me hungry but approachable. / Diverse. / One-tenth (percent color),” writes McBride, laying plain the poem’s mistrust of the performative nature of modern diversity. In the poem’s last stanza, McBride pivots to a quiet revolt: “No dark Black scientist. / Makes the lighting too tricky.” In a single, simple line about lighting, the poem condemns this quiet kind of covert racism, where cameramen refuse to work with lighting for Black skin.

McBride does not explicitly spell out these complaints. Rather, the poems create a jigsaw puzzle of meaning, where the reader is asked to piece together details and context; ultimately, readers are guided with mounting comprehension — and sometimes horror — to a complete understanding. McBride certainly uses abrupt endings to her advantage. However, instead of flipping the whole poem on its head, these thoughtful endings act as the final puzzle piece.

This strength is bolstered by McBride’s beautiful and descriptive imagery. In “Not Even a Nina Simone Hymn Can Perform Magic Tricks,” one of the collection’s best poems, McBride describes a police shooting.

“The bullet didn’t want to be in your body it wanted to be in the velvet air holding Nina’s voice, so it went all the way through (apologizing on the exit) kissing every organ,” writes McBride.

The “velvet air” that McBride creates drips with the soft beauty of Nina Simone’s voice, even if the reader has never heard her music. The personification of the bullet as an apologetic, caring, and ultimately powerless pawn of police brutality jarringly shifts the perspective. McBride often uses these types of vivid imagery and contradictions to subvert expectations and subtly strengthen her poetic voice.

“Thick with Trouble” succeeds in this amplification. The collection shines through its brutally unapologetic nature; it is both vivid and powerful. The techniques used to convey recurrent motifs — from unusual syntax to evocative spirituality, such as Tarot Cards — and the vivid imagery combine to lay bare each poem’s meaning without giving too much away. In other words, “Thick with Trouble” gracefully toes the line between the incomprehensible and the quotidian, creating a beautiful and intriguing poetry collection.

—Staff writer Alessandro M. M. Drake can be reached at alessandro.drake@thecrimson.com.