The Tradition, Jericho Brown
The Tradition, Jericho Brown
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The Tradition

Author: Jericho Brown

Narrator: JD Jackson

Unabridged: 1 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/08/2019

Synopsis

Jericho Brown's daring new 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 is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while reveling in a celebration of contradiction.

About Jericho Brown

Jericho Brown worked as the speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before earning his PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. He is the recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland. His first book, PLEASE, won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets; the collection was also nominated for the NAACP award for poetry and made the Believer's top 5 Books of the Year. Brown is the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Roxane on February 29, 2020

There is a remarkable line or revelation on each poem. What can’t he do?......more

Goodreads review by s.penkevich on April 17, 2024

‘I begin with love, hoping to end there,’ writes Jericho Brown in his marvelous, Pulitzer Prize winning collection The Tradition, ‘I don’t want to leave a messy corpse.’ The task of a poet is often to take in the world and transform the truths into art, a harrowing task when there seems to be a shad......more

Goodreads review by Whitney on August 27, 2019

It's getting more dificult for me to read poetry because I find a lot of it lingers in very "middle of the road" territory, which is how I felt this one was. Jericho's writing is certainly pretty and I highlighted a lot of impactful lines, but I also found myself skimming some poems that I couldn't......more

Goodreads review by Read By RodKelly on April 06, 2019

The Tradition is a stunning and poignant collection of poems that examine the ache, the grief, the sexuality, the music, and the language of the black body. Be it man, woman, lover, or tormentor, these roles are exposed and explored with a sharp and slightly sardonic eye. These poems challenge our c......more

Goodreads review by chantel on January 14, 2020

OMG. I don't even know where to begin with this. Jericho Brown touched me on levels with The Tradition. I swear I was reading this on the bus and subway and just felt my eyes filling with water. This is some of the heaviest poetry I've read since I read Felon last month by Reginald Dwayne Betts. I c......more

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