Sugar House Review(s)

No Sweet Without Brine

by Cynthia Manick

(Amistad, 2023) 

Reviewed by Kashawn Taylor

The unapologetic Blackness of Cynthia Manick’s poetry in No Sweet Without Brine is what makes the writing shine as though the poems are lathered with cocoa butter.  The collection ensures the reader knows that we are “living, not just alive.”  It is a fruit, both sweet and sour, familiarly and painfully refreshing.  

In “I Try to Imagine Them Smitten,” Manick writes about Black love, and her parents’ specifically. The language here is mostly simple, without pomp and flourish, but it is a testament to Manick’s skill with words that she does not have to use esoteric diction to create something beautiful, moving. The poem opens, “I’ve never seen my parents’ kiss” and goes on to describe a photograph in which her parents appear and tries to imagine them “smitten / past the slammed doors / past the obsidian quiet” musing that perhaps it only happened once, presumably to create her. This poem speaks volumes on Black love, how quiet and stoic it appears to the outsider. How even a daughter finds it difficult to imagine her parents smitten.  

Manick plays with form and white space in poems such as “Tanka Suite on Survival” and “Litany for My Fears and Questions.” In the former, she references cultural events like Hurricane Katrina—a notoriously devastating natural disaster for the Black community—and, in the latter, asks, “Is it wrong to want a storm named after you?” The juxtaposition of these two poems demonstrates the conflict within Black women: to mourn the dead exhaustedly from a storm / to want be the storm.  

Keeping the storm imagery in “Dear Superman,” she writes that Superman flies past “women of strong flavors” and “hot peppers between their legs / and a storm inside.” Manick asserts Superman flies past these women of color in favor of the Lois Lane-type because they “secretly stir [him] from liver to toenail.” The poem, however, ends with a sort of pleading, telling Superman that those ignored women too desire “strong arms” and “have dreams of sleeping between stars.”

The book speaks to me in subtle ways. Manick’s use of the Eintou inspired me. The form, which takes its name from West African for “pearl” contains thirty-two syllables and is meant to give the reader insight on something, a new piece of information.—pearls of wisdom, if you will. In Manick’s “Eintou for Possibility," she writes that the “gap between / my teeth is actually / a portal.”  The gap in front teeth is common among Black people; I have one myself. In this poem Manick turns a common imperfection into something magical, “a world where all the / gaps meet.”

Manick’s switches voices effortlessly throughout, using what is commonly called a “blaccent” in poems like “Livin’ Flush” to using proper grammar in the next piece, “Girls Like Me Are Made Of….” The narrators in these poems showcase and celebrate all different types of Black, whether you speak pretty or not. 

No Sweet Without Brine lives up to its title. While there is sweetness in this ode to Blackness, there is also a sourness that comes with it. From enjoying listening to Idris Elba on a sleep app to a poem about self-care titled “Notes Toward a Poem on Self-Care,” Manick encapsulates the many joys and fears of growing up a black woman. The fruit imagery shines throughout, a reference to the sweet and sour aspects of simply Existing While Black, and the reader comes away feeling better for having experienced a soulful, candid ride. 

Kashawn Taylor is a Black, queer, formerly incarcerated writer based in Connecticut. He holds a BA in English and Psychology and an MA in English and creative writing, and is currently an MFA student. His work has appeared recently in such journals as, The Shore Poetry, Querencia Press, Oyster River Pages, Prison Journalism Project, and more. He has work forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Emergent Literary, Union Spring Literary Review, Tufts University's reSentencing Journal, among others. His collection of "prison poetry," subhuman, is forthcoming in March 2025 from Wayfarer Books. Find him on Instagram, @kashawn.writes, or www.kashawntaylor.com.