Earlier this year, Brooklyn-based poet and author Cynthia Manick released her latest poetry collection, No Sweet Without Brine (Amistad Press, 2023). Selected by the New York Public Library as one of the Best Books for Adults 2023, The work is wonderful, full of memory and wonder. Manick uses poetry to make the mundane feel like freedom while incorporating contemporary themes, such as Idris Elba’s narration on the Calm App, dating apps for welders, Ursula in The Little Mermaid, the classic nostalgia of Entenmann’s cakes, and more. In her poem “It’s 3 am and the Moon is Curled like a ‘C,” Manick writes: “I once read that Black poets write about love the least.” But throughout her collection, she illustrates love within the Black experience taking forms beyond what has been deemed love by “classic” literature.
I spoke to Manick about her latest poetry collection and how she writes about the complexity of simple joys, deciding how to structure, start, finish, title, order, and incorporate wonder into poetry.
***
The Rumpus: One of the themes I saw in this collection was that of Black people loving small, especially from the first poem, “Always Use a Gold Crayon to Color Yourself in.” There is a line that says, “I learned to hide my shimmer. . . .” I found themes of Black people loving others and themselves in a way that isn’t very loud. Can you elaborate more on that?
Cynthia Manick: I always say that if we’re silent about our joy, they’ll think we’re not human enough to deserve it. So, I’m always thinking about how we make sure our joy and humanity is in our work, but I’m also thinking about how we’re all—Black culture mostly—taught to not be loud. We’re taught to have our joy silently or have our joy quietly. Not to make too much noise. Not to make too much of a ruckus. Not to be too unruly, right? And so, when you’re growing up, you learn how to cherish those moments in small ways that fill you up so much that it feels like a big way.
Rumpus: How do you write about the simplicities in our lives in a way that makes them feel more complex? Something so simple can feel like a moment of freedom. I want to know how you capture that, and what your goal is when you capture that. Is it as intentional as it feels when I read it?
Manick: I feel like we don’t say it, but don’t we all live epic lives? Even if we’re doing the dishes, even if we’re talking to our moms, if we’re going to work—Isn’t there something epic about that? Our presence in the universe, our presence with our families, being able to love, being able to cry, the fact that we even walk upright, sometimes, is a miracle to me. I think when we’re little, we have this idea of wonder. We wonder about everything—question everything. As we get older, we lose that ability to wonder. I want to put wonder back into poetry and back into how we think about the world we live in.
Rumpus: How do you decide on a structure for each poem? You play around with structure a lot, and it keeps things really fun and keeps the eyes moving on the page. What’s going on when you’re making those decisions?
Manick: For one, I’m a fast talker. So, when I’m writing poems, I’m always thinking about how I can inflect my breath in the poem. Number two: I used to write only on the left-hand side of the page like we were all taught to. Then a couple of years ago, I realized I wanted to breathe on the rest of the page. Now I call this book “a book of wide-leg poems.” All these poems are larger and wider. I’m thinking about the way we do things in life. I mean, we don’t do one thing and then walk away. We do fifty million things at the same time. So, why can’t my work do that as well?
Rumpus: I also really appreciate your list-making. When do you decide which poems are going to take the list form?
Manick: A couple of years ago, I realized list poems were officially a thing that people did in poetry. My day job is as a scrum master at a nonprofit, so I run a couple of teams and am the master of spreadsheets and lists. I really put that part of myself in my poetry. I started asking, “How can I merge these two things together? How can I put my love of order with my love of creative chaos?’ I’m a very curious person, so I find that curiosity in my poems, and the list form suits that curiosity in the best way.
Rumpus: I also appreciate how you have such a strong style: undoubtedly poetry and some prose, but it’s contemporary writing within poetry, and some people can be really stuffy about that. At times it can be weird to read about an iPhone in a poem and convey modern things. I remember you mentioning the dating app for welders in one of your poems in this collection. You find a way to make those things still feel inherently and classically like poetry while still having contemporary subjects.
Manick: Some things don’t change, right? Emotions don’t change, we all know love and joy. We all know pain. We all know “trying to find love.” I think love can evolve in how you find it. It’ll still be intrinsic to that emotional love.
Rumpus: You have such strong imagery of the Black American experience. One of my favorite lines mentions a pink Cadillac with toned ridges of Angela Bassett’s arms. If you don’t get it, then you don’t get it, but how do you give space for people to get it? For someone who might not have grown up with Marvin Gay or Aretha Franklin, how can they be inspired to understand the experience?
Manick: The idea of accessibility in the work? Do you have to understand Black culture to understand this work? I would say no. You have to understand culture in general. When I was writing this book, I wanted to capture a sense of things that fascinated me of our joy from memory. So one thing is Pink Lotion. I remember having Pink Lotion in high school, putting it on my hair, the plastic [cover] on the couch. Those are all sort of artifacts of not only Black issues but my memory.
Rumpus: You have a lot of odes and dedication poems, including one to The Little Mermaid. Did you immediately know you’re going to write a poem about it? Do you sit with it longer? How does that start? How does that generate?
Manick: So for “Message Pulled from a Bottle at Sea,” I was like “Man, Ursula gets a bad rap! She should be better than that.” That’s how I came up with that [poem]. And that’s how the poem ends up happening. Usually when I’m doing an ode, either I read something where I questioned how the world works, or [I was] mad at something.
Rumpus: How do you start your approach to a poem? When do you know it’s complete?
Manick: I usually start a poem on scrap paper, the scrappier the better because there’s no pressure for it to be perfect on paper that’s all stained up with coffee. I usually start either with a question or an image and go from there. Then I rearrange the start, post-editing. I think about my endings. You don’t want to be too closed, right? We don’t want to put a bow on a poem that’s too precious because that will deflate the poem. So I’m always thinking, “If I couldn’t talk after I read the poem, what do I want to say?”
Sometimes I’ll be reading and think, “This poem should be ending two lines above.” I cut things if I’m going on too long because if I’m trying to convince the reader to believe me, I’m trying too hard. I need to step back. I’ll write a poem, step away from it for a day or two, come back to it, re-edit it, and then think about it from a new perspective. How is this poem supposed to look on the page if I read it out loud? Am I stumbling over any words? Does it fall out of me naturally, or am I trying to fix or fit words that don’t really belong there? It’s a combination of editing, not making anything too precious, verbalizing when I read them out loud to the sound of my voice, and also thinking about a playlist. If this poem was a playlist, how would this playlist end? Is it going to end on a high note? Is it going to peter out? Is it going to be a fade-out? That’s a good question. I’ve never thought about that before.
Rumpus: Your titles play a big part in giving context. Do you decide on the title after you write the poem?
Manick: When I teach student workshops, I’m always a stickler about titles. Why? Because an untitled poem is like writing into the front half of a direction. I always think your titles must inform the reader which direction to go and when they get back to reflect on it.
Rumpus: How did you determine the ordering of your poems and sections within No Sweet Without the Brine?
Manick: I knew I wanted four sections of the book—there are four elements. Then I was thinking about if this was a playlist. If you’re at a party and you’re going to play house music, then a slow song, then a Motown jam. How are you going to create a gamut that is either seamless or builds? So the poem can talk to the next poem or tap them on the shoulder. That’s how I always think of it. I think you do need to find the “I” when you open up the book. How do I experience the world as I go throughout the book?
When I think about how I want to end a section, [it’s like] a transition to a new song. Do you want to do the [record scratch]? Do you want to fade it in? Do you want to fade out? Do you want to do it abruptly? Do you want to have a total break where people go to take a drink? I think about how the pause is going to be.
Rumpus: I’m thinking of “Last Night Inside My Blood,” and “We Make Sin a Good Hymn.” Those worked so well beside one another. It was like listening to a song that faded into the next, like you were mentioning with playlists, or if you listened to an interlude and you almost didn’t know when the song switched.
Manick: Yes! In the 1990s, we used to do that all the time. That section is called “Sin is a Good Hymn.” I wanted to have a section about love and sensuality, and sort of [ask] “How do you look at Black love? Black desire? Desire for the self and desire for others? How do you recognize that in yourself?” How do you recognize, “Oh, I’m a woman now, when did that happen?” That section really is about those recognitions happening in life and in the work, and so having them close to each other just made sense because each of the poems in that section, prior to “My Calm App Lets Me Sleep with Idris Elba” down to “Lessons in Keeping a Man” are all sorts of weird interactions on how you find love and how you define desire. And so it’s gonna be fun, it’s gonna be sexy, and something in between, but all varieties of it. Some of it can be under candlelight, some of it can be meeting a random guy at a bar, and all those experiences are valid, fun, and interesting.
Rumpus: There are themes of love and Black women and girls being free in this collection. In one poem, you talk about how when no one’s watching, you can have your feet out in the dirt under a tree and have freedom from the male gaze. Another line that stuck out to me is about a brown girl licking an ice cream cone and no boy or man makes a gesture or says a word.
Manick: It’s that ease. I think when we’re younger, we sort of have that, but as we get older, we lose that ability to just be at ease with it in public.
Rumpus: What’s the biggest takeaway that you want readers to have?
Manick: What does it mean to be Black and alive right now? To be a Black woman and alive right now? I think when we write about what hates us, we shouldn’t forget to write about what loves us, so make sure when we write about our traumas, we also write about what comes after the trauma, whether it’s hugging your family, or whether it’s going for a walk. [If] you open up a wound, how do you close a wound? You can’t walk around wounded all the time.
***
Author photograph by Chen Li
