Amber McBride's poetic voice burst on the scene with the National Book Award finalist Me (Moth), a young adult novel in verse. Her first adult collection, Thick with Trouble, puts that voice on full display, insistent and fierce as it interrogates the many ways a person--especially a Black woman--can be identified. McBride (Gone Wolf; We Are All So Good at Smiling) draws on the Hoodoo tradition and evokes the spiritual throughout the collection, organizing what she calls her "[Troublesome] Poems" into sections denoted by five tarot cards, each with a twist (e.g., "The Devil's Sister (Reversed)" and "The Hermit Woman Named Griot").
In the opening poem, "Roll Call: New Tarot Names for Black Girls," McBride invites readers to "Call us something lovely/ mischief changing robes./ Call us hardened honey's brownness/ on the tip of the tasting spoon." Soon after, the poem shifts from "us" to "me," proclaiming, "It's cold darling. Come inside, make a cream-colored psalm of me./ Call me gospel--I don't mind harboring millions of maybes at once."
McBride makes repeated use of this claiming and reclaiming of names or descriptors. She plays with the definitions of the titular "thick" and "trouble," which she underlines, imbuing each instance of them with layers of meaning. This collection of more than 50 poems is beautiful, sonorous, and song-like, even as the poems talk back and raise their voices. "Fragments of Dreams Left to Char at the Bottom of the Pot" opens with a quote from Nina Simone and closes with a line reminiscent of Elizabeth Bishop: "If you're afraid--(write it)/ grit your teeth, they'll kill you either way, you know." --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian