The Tradition
Jericho Brown
08 August 2019
9781529020472Synopsis
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRY
The Tradition by Jericho Brown, is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while revelling in a celebration of contradiction.
A Poetry Book Society Choice
'To read Jericho Brown's poems is to encounter devastating genius.' Claudia Rankine
Jericho Brown’s daring poetry collection 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? 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 – testament to his formal skill.
To read Jericho Brown's poems is to encounter devastating genius.Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen: An American Lyric
Some folks write poems, Jericho Brown writes gospel.Danez Smith, author of Don't Call Us Dead
Brown’s poems are flirtatious, teasing us with moments of sexual and emotional vulnerability . . . In Brown’s poems, the body at risk — the infected body, the abused body, the black body, the body in eros — is most vulnerable to the cruelty of the world. But even in their most searing moments, these poems are resilient out of necessity, faithful to their account of survival, when survival is the hardest task of all.New York Times
