The Tradition
by Jericho Brown
Jericho Brown’s collection is electrifying—formally inventive and emotionally direct. The poems confront racism, masculinity, desire, and vulnerability with fierce precision. Brown’s “duplex” form threads repetition and variation into a music that feels both ritual and argument. The book holds beauty and brutality in the same breath, refusing to let lyricism soften the truth. Brown writes with intimacy, addressing lovers, the self, and a nation that is often hostile. There is rage here, but also tenderness and humor. The poems are attentive to the body as a site of pleasure and danger. Brown’s images are sharp, memorable, and often startling. The collection’s title points to inherited patterns—poetic and cultural—that Brown both honors and disrupts. Reading it feels like being spoken to directly, with urgency and care. It’s a vital book that expands what contemporary poetry can do.
