The Tradition

Jericho Brown's daring book The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown's poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie?

Brown makes mythical pastorals to question the terrors to which we've become accustomed, and to celebrate how we survive.

Poems of fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness, worship, and trauma are propelled into stunning clarity by Brown's mastery, and his invention of the duplex — a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues — is testament to his formal skill.

The Tradition, winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while reveling in a celebration of contradiction. (From Copper Canyon Press)

• Jericho Brown among 2019 U.S. National Book Awards finalists
• Jericho Brown's prize-winning poetry speaks with power and urgency about racism and violence
• 25 books about being Black in Canada
• Ryan B. Patrick says if you liked The Tradition by Jericho Brown, you'll love Canisia Lubrin's The Dyzgraphxst

Jericho Brown is an American poet and writer. He is the recipient of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, a Whiting Writers' Award and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Born and raised in Shreveport, La., Brown is based in Atlanta.

From the book

Interviews with Jericho Brown

Writers and Company53:55American poet Jericho Brown speaks with power and urgency about racism and violence

The winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry talks to Eleanor Wachtel about the legacy of racial injustice and his award-winning collection, The Tradition.