Jericho Brown is a contemporary poet who works as the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University. He won the Whiting Writers’ Award and several fellowships. His first book was Please, and his second was The New Testament. His next collection won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
‘Duplex’ by Jericho Brown explores physical and mental abuse, looking at how memory can impact a person.
A poem is a gesture toward home.
It makes dark demands I call my own.
Memory makes demands darker than my own:
My last love drove a burgundy car.
‘Duplex: Cento’ explores the cyclical nature of love, conflict, and inherited emotional patterns. It touches on how past relationships, particularly with family, shape the way we love, argue, and deal with pain.
My last love drove a burgundy car,
Color of a rash, a symptom of sickness.
We were the symptoms, the road our sickness:
None of our fights ended where they began.
‘The Tradition’ is the titular poem from Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown’s poetry collection. It brings to light the maltreatment of African Americans in the present US, while relating it to the past.
Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium. We thought
Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt, learning
Names in heat, in elements classical
Philosophers said could change us. Star Gazer.
‘Dear Dr. Frankenstein’ is a warning against the dangers of scientific and intellectual arrogance told as a letter to the fictional doctor.
I, too, know the science of building men
Out of fragments in little light
Where I'll be damned if lightning don't
‘Bullet Points’ by Brown directly condemns police violence, asserting accountability for deaths near law enforcement.
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