The Tradition
Jericho Brown
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)
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- 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
