The Tradition - by Jericho Brown (Paperback)

About the Book

The Tradition explores cultural threats on black bodies, resistance, and the interplay of desire and privilege in a dangerous era.

Book Synopsis

WINNER OF THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRY

Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award

"100 Notable Books of the Year," The New York Times Book Review

One Book, One Philadelphia Citywide Reading Program Selection, 2021

"By some literary magic--no, it's precision, and honesty--Brown manages to bestow upon even the most public of subjects the most intimate and personal stakes."--Craig Morgan Teicher, "'I Reject Walls': A 2019 Poetry Preview" for NPR

"A relentless dismantling of identity, a difficult jewel of a poem."--Rita Dove, in her introduction to Jericho Brown's "Dark" (featured in the New York Times Magazine in January 2019)

"Winner of a Whiting Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Brown's hard-won lyricism finds fire (and idyll) in the intersection of politics and love for queer Black men."--O, The Oprah Magazine

Named a Lit Hub "Most Anticipated Book of 2019"

One of Buzzfeed's "66 Books Coming in 2019 You'll Want to Keep Your Eyes On"

The Rumpus poetry pick for "What to Read When 2019 is Just Around the Corner"

One of BookRiot's "50 Must-Read Poetry Collections of 2019"

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.

Review Quotes

Praise for The Tradition

"To read Jericho Brown's poems is to encounter devastating genius."--Claudia Rankine

"Jericho Brown often refers to himself as a love poet, and indeed, his third poetry collection, The Tradition, includes verses about ecstasy and longing. . . . But the book's sweeping scope also encompasses themes of racism, sexual violence, H.I.V. and police brutality. Throughout, the Louisiana-born poet draws on mythology and history to dissect a world that often devalues the voices of Black gay men."--Brian Keith Jackson, New York Times

"These astounding poems by Jericho Brown don't merely hold a lens up to the world and watch from a safe distance; they run or roll or stomp their way into what matters--loss, desire, rage, becoming--and stay there until something necessary begins to make sense. Like the music that runs through this collection, they get inside of you and make something there ache. It's a feeling that doesn't quite go away--and you won't want it to. This is one of the most luminous and courageous voices I have read in a long, long time."--U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith

"Exquisite, incisive, as full of the spirit as the soil, the breath and the body, Jericho Brown's newest collection The Tradition is today's essential poetry."--John Keene

"Erotic and grief-stricken, ministerial and playful, Brown offers his reader a journey unlike any other in contemporary poetry."--Rain Taxi Review of Books

"So much of what is both right and wrong in America is often chalked up to tradition, as this collection from Jericho Brown so astutely observes. Brown blends pastorals with the history of slavery that created those scenes. He questions freedom and safety in a nation that didn't really mean 'all' men when it said, ' . . . all men are created equal.' Brown even invents a new form, the duplex, in this incredible collection."--Book Riot

"Nothing screams springtime like poetry. While Jericho Brown's collection The Tradition leans heavily on flower motifs and imagery, these beautiful poems articulate the experience of a young, gay, Black man in America. It is a heart-stoppingly gorgeous collection about love, loss, safety, and worship told through a series of pastoral poems. Brown invented his own unique form of poem, the "Duplex," which is featured heavily in this book. Even for those who don't normally pick up poetry, this work by a Pulitzer Prize winner is worth a read."--Crimson

"Brown's subtleties in the narrative create great irony, feel refined. We are led to believe the renewed expression of the speaker's homosexuality is something his father could never truly understand. Brown gives us a space for all emotional selves to come together and embrace commonality of experience."--David Crews

"Jericho Brown is an award-winning queer poet and creative writing teacher. His Pulitzer Prize-winning collection The Tradition explores trauma, violence, legacy, intimacy, and much more in a way that shows his mastery of language. These poems utilize Brown's original form of the duplex, a combination of sonnet, ghazal, and blues. I recommend reading each poem through at least twice; you'll be surprised by what comes to light in rereading."--Book Riot

"His lyrics are memorable, muscular, majestic . . . Brown's poems are living on the page."--Ilya Kaminsky

Praise for The Tradition

"To read Jericho Brown's poems is to encounter devastating genius."-Claudia Rankine

"Jericho Brown often refers to himself as a love poet, and indeed, his third poetry collection, The Tradition, includes verses about ecstasy and longing. . . . But the book's sweeping scope also encompasses themes of racism, sexual violence, H.I.V. and police brutality. Throughout, the Louisiana-born poet draws on mythology and history to dissect a world that often devalues the voices of Black gay men."--Brian Keith Jackson, New York Times

"These astounding poems by Jericho Brown don't merely hold a lens up to the world and watch from a safe distance; they run or roll or stomp their way into what matters--loss, desire, rage, becoming--and stay there until something necessary begins to make sense. Like the music that runs through this collection, they get inside of you and make something there ache. It's a feeling that doesn't quite go away--and you won't want it to. This is one of the most luminous and courageous voices I have read in a long, long time."--U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith

"Exquisite, incisive, as full of the spirit as the soil, the breath and the body, Jericho Brown's newest collection The Tradition is today's essential poetry."--John Keene

"Erotic and grief-stricken, ministerial and playful, Brown offers his reader a journey unlike any other in contemporary poetry."--Rain Taxi Review of Books

"So much of what is both right and wrong in America is often chalked up to tradition, as this collection from Jericho Brown so astutely observes. Brown blends pastorals with the history of slavery that created those scenes. He questions freedom and safety in a nation that didn't really mean 'all' men when it said, ' . . . all men are created equal.' Brown even invents a new form, the duplex, in this incredible collection."--Book Riot

"Nothing screams springtime like poetry. While Jericho Brown's collection The Tradition leans heavily on flower motifs and imagery, these beautiful poems articulate the experience of a young, gay, Black man in America. It is a heart-stoppingly gorgeous collection about love, loss, safety, and worship told through a series of pastoral poems. Brown invented his own unique form of poem, the "Duplex," which is featured heavily in this book. Even for those who don't normally pick up poetry, this work by a Pulitzer Prize winner is worth a read."--Crimson

"Brown's subtleties in the narrative create great irony, feel refined. We are led to believe the renewed expression of the speaker's homosexuality is something his father could never truly understand. Brown gives us a space for all emotional selves to come together and embrace commonality of experience."--David Crews

"Jericho Brown is an award-winning queer poet and creative writing teacher. His Pulitzer Prize-winning collection The Tradition explores trauma, violence, legacy, intimacy, and much more in a way that shows his mastery of language. These poems utilize Brown's original form of the duplex, a combination of sonnet, ghazal, and blues. I recommend reading each poem through at least twice; you'll be surprised by what comes to light in rereading."--Book Riot

"His lyrics are memorable, muscular, majestic . . . Brown's poems are living on the page."--Ilya Kaminsky

About the Author

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for The Tradition, Jericho Brown earned 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 (New Issues), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament, won won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal. Brown is the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.