By Abriana Jetté, Ph.D.
Sayreville, NJ, USA
At the start of protests demanding racial equality and the tail end of many nationwide lockdowns, five weeks after he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his third collection of poetry, The Tradition, I spent an hour talking to and learning from Jericho Brown.
By now, Jericho Brown is a household name. Even if you aren’t a reader of poetry, Brown’s words have been widely available in The Guardian, The New York Times, and Buzzfeed. He’s been interviewed by the BBC and countless other journals, interviews and talks that have been shared, retweeted, and devoured by collectively, yes, millions of readers.
But heavy is the crown, they say.
Brown, whose mother’s grandparents were slaves freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, currently stands as the only brother in the Panhellenic Council to receive a Pulitzer Prize; in fact, though he is not the only member of the LGBTQ+ community to have ever won a Pulitzer, he is the only Black Queer poet to receive the Pulitzer for Poetry. As fate would have it, Jericho Brown is also the only Black Queer poet to receive a Pulitzer Prize in poetry during the coronavirus pandemic and during these revolutionary protests aimed at instilling necessary systematic change within our nation.
Four years ago, I spoke to Brown about the intersection of his poetry and the #BlackLivesMatter Movement. In that conversation, he recognized the power of song within his poems, but, still, he said, he wasn’t sure if his words would, or could, be sung at protests or rallies. Over the past month, hundreds of sons, brothers, fathers, daughters, and mothers have uploaded videos reciting poems like The Tradition, Foreday in Morning, or Bullet Points.
It is an instance of a painful miracle. Jericho Brown’s songs have not stopped playing, no matter how painful and traumatic. The truth resonating in his collected work demonstrates what many are protesting for around the world: the yearning for love, the yearning for freedom, and the yearning for freedom to love.
By now, Jericho Brown is a household name. Even if you aren’t a reader of poetry, Brown’s words have been widely available in The Guardian, The New York Times, and Buzzfeed. He’s been interviewed by the BBC and countless other journals, interviews and talks that have been shared, retweeted, and devoured by collectively, yes, millions of readers.
But heavy is the crown, they say.
Brown, whose mother’s grandparents were slaves freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, currently stands as the only brother in the Panhellenic Council to receive a Pulitzer Prize; in fact, though he is not the only member of the LGBTQ+ community to have ever won a Pulitzer, he is the only Black Queer poet to receive the Pulitzer for Poetry. As fate would have it, Jericho Brown is also the only Black Queer poet to receive a Pulitzer Prize in poetry during the coronavirus pandemic and during these revolutionary protests aimed at instilling necessary systematic change within our nation.
Four years ago, I spoke to Brown about the intersection of his poetry and the #BlackLivesMatter Movement. In that conversation, he recognized the power of song within his poems, but, still, he said, he wasn’t sure if his words would, or could, be sung at protests or rallies. Over the past month, hundreds of sons, brothers, fathers, daughters, and mothers have uploaded videos reciting poems like The Tradition, Foreday in Morning, or Bullet Points.
It is an instance of a painful miracle. Jericho Brown’s songs have not stopped playing, no matter how painful and traumatic. The truth resonating in his collected work demonstrates what many are protesting for around the world: the yearning for love, the yearning for freedom, and the yearning for freedom to love.
Now, I’m sorry that I can’t duplicate the exact tone and rhythm of Brown’s voice, the warm cadences with a hint of southern twang, though I have tried my best to do so in terms of punctuation and spacing and the like. However, know that when I write “((laughter))”, what I want you to imagine is a wide-mouthed smile opening with generosity. Know that when I write “((laughter))”, I want you to hear an intoxicating burst words can’t duplicate.
Brown and I talked over the phone. It was a clear, calm, sunny afternoon in early June. While we were inside, chatting, thousands of people flocked to the busiest streets in their cities across America chanting “No Justice. No Peace” because what they couldn’t stop hearing before their chants was “the sound of a mother weeping again” (from “Duplex”).
I begin our conversation for you en media res, sans the initial salutations.
Brown and I talked over the phone. It was a clear, calm, sunny afternoon in early June. While we were inside, chatting, thousands of people flocked to the busiest streets in their cities across America chanting “No Justice. No Peace” because what they couldn’t stop hearing before their chants was “the sound of a mother weeping again” (from “Duplex”).
I begin our conversation for you en media res, sans the initial salutations.
ABRIANA JETTÉ: I wanted to start with a story I’ve heard a few times, the one where you describe your first encounter with poetry in your local library, and how you felt welcomed in the space offered by the line. I remember you describing prose as intimidating – that with poetry, there was rhythm and music carried over or stopped, but never needing to be understood.
But you’ve also mentioned that you’ve begun working on a collection of prose. Now, you are facing, even conquering, what you once described as intimidating. What type of connections have you noticed between how you write in the two genres? Is there anything intimidating to you about prose, as there seemed to be all of those years ago?
JERICHO BROWN: It turns out that over the years I’ve been on hundreds of panels and I’ve given hundreds of lectures and craft talks and I’ve gotten many assignments; for instance, most recently I was welcomed to write an Op-Ed piece in The Guardian. And I think having done all of that work, and having been writing letters and notes, I’ve been writing what turns out to be prose writing in one way or another since probably about 2008. And that doesn’t even count the interviews!
Because I’ve been doing that kind of work, I’m in the position now where there is so much of it that I can indeed look at it and see if there’s something to make of it, that I can compile it and create a book out of it that would be part personal essay, part cultural criticism, part criticism on poetry. And, I know that’s what I’m going to do, but I have to have the time to sit down and do it. And I’ve been really busy! ((laughter))
JERICHO BROWN: After the announcement for the Pulitzer, I talked to no less than six reporters each day for the first week and within that week was also the death of Ahmaud Arbery. Because I am a black writer who won the Pulitzer and because what The Tradition is about, many people were reaching out to me – even more people than what would have only because of the Pulitzer. And then these most recent protests following the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd also has me doing a lot of work.
I just finished an essay for The New York Times for a section they are doing on Pride and Pride month, so, I’m doing a lot of the writing for that book right now. I just haven’t had the time to do the thinking or the reflecting. You know writing is not just about writing, it’s about reflecting on what you have written so you can organize it in your head and collate and combine and figure out themes. So that’s what’s next, as it relates to prose.
That intimidation with prose, that all had to do with when I was kid, and I would look at a book of prose and it was all words all over the page. I would look at a book of poetry and it’s one fourth of the page! ((laughter)) So when I was 7 and 8, I was excited to get a page done without much text!
But I was also learning how to read silence and how to read space. When you’re a poetry reader, you sort of begin to understand that there is something that happens at the end of the line break, and the end of the stanza, and in all of the empty space that poems allow.
And that was how I felt about prose then, and now I have a relationship to it not because of some desire to write it, but really because I’ve written so much of it that I feel responsible to putting it together and to seeing if there is more that I have to say in that particular genre and form. I’ll see what happens.
It’s hard to think about myself in the third person – I’m too busy within my life to do that. I also know that there are certain people that I like to hear from, and I like to know more about what they think. We’re all interested in Toni Morrison’s novels, but when we read her novels, they are so interesting that we’re like well: “Well what does she think?” Also, because Toni Morrison held such an auspicious position as a writer in our minds throughout the world. So, considering all the things that you mentioned [the first this, the first that], I imagine it’s a good idea for me to have some record of what I’ve been thinking.
ABRIANA JETTÉ: It’s history. You are part of history.
JERICHO BROWN: Yes. It seems to be right to be able to do that. So that’s what I’m doing.
[AJ: Overcome by these words, I search around at my list of questions. I tell Jericho that I’m going to bounce around and see where the conversation takes us, abandoning any order. After this first answer, this nugget of nonchalant wisdom and depth and grace, I realize that the best thing, the only thing I can do to serve this interview justice is to listen. So, I listen, and weave my way in a little here, a little there. Still, it’s an interview, and I proceed by asking another question.]
ABRIANA JETTÉ: If I can, I want to go back to that idea about learning how to read the silences and the function of silence in poetry.
In the poetic form you created, the Duplex, you put in the sonnet silences that were not there, that did not exist, silences that are so imperative to the turns and to your remaking and to the revisions.
JERICHO BROWN: Yes. It seems to be right to be able to do that. So that’s what I’m doing.
[AJ: Overcome by these words, I search around at my list of questions. I tell Jericho that I’m going to bounce around and see where the conversation takes us, abandoning any order. After this first answer, this nugget of nonchalant wisdom and depth and grace, I realize that the best thing, the only thing I can do to serve this interview justice is to listen. So, I listen, and weave my way in a little here, a little there. Still, it’s an interview, and I proceed by asking another question.]
ABRIANA JETTÉ: If I can, I want to go back to that idea about learning how to read the silences and the function of silence in poetry.
In the poetic form you created, the Duplex, you put in the sonnet silences that were not there, that did not exist, silences that are so imperative to the turns and to your remaking and to the revisions.
In the past, you’ve spoken a little bit about double consciousness, most recently in your interview with Nikki Finney for The Believer. Listening, I noted that the duplex was a kind of that double consciousness; that through repetitions we reveal divisions, and through repetition we confront ourselves, and part of what you do is that you confront all of the selves in yourself through your poetry. You don’t allow for submission of any self.
So, all of this you created. You made. Where were you when you were made the form? You know, because this is some wonderful knowledge. So many poets have already mimicked this form. It’s going to be carried on for generations – maybe that’s the song we all need, the song of the protests, the duplex. So, anyway, if you could just mark that moment, talk about the name “Duplex”, where you were when you realized you were making this, really anything about the creation.
JERICHO BROWN: Yeah. This is a great question. So, I knew I was thinking formally, but I didn’t know I was creating a form, if that makes sense.
There are things about this form that have been percolating inside my thinking for almost ten years to be honest with you. I just never wrote them down. I was just thinking “Oh, I wonder if a poem can do this” or, “I wonder if a poem can do that,” which is really how most poets work. We are all trying to figure out: “Can I do this with this?”, “Can I do that?”, “What if it ends in this way?” You know what I’m saying? That’s how we do what we do, that’s how we stretch and that’s how we change the possibilities of the genre.
So, all of this you created. You made. Where were you when you were made the form? You know, because this is some wonderful knowledge. So many poets have already mimicked this form. It’s going to be carried on for generations – maybe that’s the song we all need, the song of the protests, the duplex. So, anyway, if you could just mark that moment, talk about the name “Duplex”, where you were when you realized you were making this, really anything about the creation.
JERICHO BROWN: Yeah. This is a great question. So, I knew I was thinking formally, but I didn’t know I was creating a form, if that makes sense.
There are things about this form that have been percolating inside my thinking for almost ten years to be honest with you. I just never wrote them down. I was just thinking “Oh, I wonder if a poem can do this” or, “I wonder if a poem can do that,” which is really how most poets work. We are all trying to figure out: “Can I do this with this?”, “Can I do that?”, “What if it ends in this way?” You know what I’m saying? That’s how we do what we do, that’s how we stretch and that’s how we change the possibilities of the genre.
I would say that it wasn’t until January of 2018 that I really sat down and took what I had been thinking about for around ten years and tried to make poems of it. Even then I wasn’t thinking “Oh I made a form”, I was thinking, let’s see what happens if I duplex, literally. ((Laughter)) So around then I realized, “Oh, I am indeed making a thing that even I haven’t seen before.” I’m making a thing I haven’t seen before and that means I’m making a form. I sort of went backwards.
It’s important to note that I never wrote a duplex from the first line to the first to the last line. I mean the revision meant I would write new lines, but the earliest duplex were made from lines sitting around for around twenty years.
ABRIANA JETTÉ: One thing I would follow up with then is back to the silence of it. There’s so much talk these days about silence. You mentioned already the prominence of the fact that you won the Pulitzer during the same week Ahmaud Arbery was murdered. It’s not lost on you, and, of course there’s Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and there’s the incentive for defunding police. And even though you are not the only poet to witness it, you are the Pulitzer Prize winning poet of the year to witness it. You talk so much about how poetry heals broken hearts; in terms of your own healing, do you feel you have been processing anything over the past few months?
JERICHO BROWN: I don’t feel like I have been processing much of anything since sheltering in place, because real emotional, well, I think, real emotional processing requires community and I haven’t been able to be in community in all of the ways that I would. I am trying to stay healthy and safe and trying to make sure others are healthy and safe as well.
I have high blood pressure and I have kidney disease so all of those are indeed pre-existing issues ((laughter)). And I have all these other health issues – I’ve got stuff going on! ((laughter)). I mean, I look good, but I’m older than I was yesterday!
 |
| Jericho Brown |
The hardest thing for me – my pastor, when I was growing up, his name was Reverend Harry Blake. He was a Civil Rights leader in Shreveport, Louisiana, and he was one of the most amazing people I ever met in my whole life. To this day, he is an influence and a huge mentor. He was a great speaker, and a great community organizer, and he was 100% a lover of people and of black people in particular. And he was a man of God – you know he believed that thing. He died of complications related to COVID, and I think the hardest part of that for me – and I’m talking about me here personally – we have to think about what this must have been like for his family – but the hardest part – when you have COVID and you are experiencing what are your last breaths, you can’t be with your family. You can’t be with them in any intimate way while you experience those last breathes and your family can’t be with you. Even though they know you are dying or possibly dying. Even the funerals we’re having don’t really allow for the kind of intimacy through touch and through proximity – and we are learning those things are quite necessary for the grieving process.
I think what happened there and what’s happening with the police and the murdering of black people, which is not new, what’s new is that it is more difficult to actually be with people and work through what you’re working through. It helps to see someone working through something. Ultimately when it comes to grief and mourning, we get through a lot of things because we see other people getting through it and we imagine that if we get through it together, then we can get through it.
See what I mean?
I think what happened there and what’s happening with the police and the murdering of black people, which is not new, what’s new is that it is more difficult to actually be with people and work through what you’re working through. It helps to see someone working through something. Ultimately when it comes to grief and mourning, we get through a lot of things because we see other people getting through it and we imagine that if we get through it together, then we can get through it.
See what I mean?
ABRIANA JETTÉ: Absolutely. That community and that unity that we all need to get on up and get going.
JERICHO BROWN: Exactly. When I was a kid, if there was a funeral, and there was an open casket funeral, my mother, my mother was so good – she was a good mom – you know it was important to her that her children have an understanding of the actuality of death. She didn’t want us to be mystified by it. She didn’t lie to us about it. She didn’t tell us somebody had gone on a long trip. If there was an open casket, she would have us go look. She wanted us to know and to remember and to acknowledge and to recognize.
And we don’t have those opportunities right now, and I look forward to having them again.
JERICHO BROWN: Exactly. When I was a kid, if there was a funeral, and there was an open casket funeral, my mother, my mother was so good – she was a good mom – you know it was important to her that her children have an understanding of the actuality of death. She didn’t want us to be mystified by it. She didn’t lie to us about it. She didn’t tell us somebody had gone on a long trip. If there was an open casket, she would have us go look. She wanted us to know and to remember and to acknowledge and to recognize.
And we don’t have those opportunities right now, and I look forward to having them again.
ABRIANA JETTÉ: That memory is a testament to your poetry and bearing witness and recording it and repeating it. No matter what, our earliest memories can go right back to our poetry. Intentionally and unintentionally.
In terms of bearing witness, and making us, your readers, bear witness, I’ve been thinking a lot about the moment in your interview with The Believer when Nikki Finney nonchalantly claimed her identity as a black lesbian poet and you had anyone listening just take a moment.
JERICHO BROWN: Oh, God, I was worn out! I was going to start crying! ((laughter)) Isn’t that crazy? I was worn! I was like – OK Nikki! You go! ((laughter)) Sorry!
In terms of bearing witness, and making us, your readers, bear witness, I’ve been thinking a lot about the moment in your interview with The Believer when Nikki Finney nonchalantly claimed her identity as a black lesbian poet and you had anyone listening just take a moment.
JERICHO BROWN: Oh, God, I was worn out! I was going to start crying! ((laughter)) Isn’t that crazy? I was worn! I was like – OK Nikki! You go! ((laughter)) Sorry!
ABRIANA JETTÉ: Oh no! It’s so important because she would have just kept going, but you made her, made all of us, recognize that impactful moment. From there, you spoke about revealing the “not” and the improbable. There’s this wonderful poet, Trace dePass, who has a poem “when to (k)not”, and so much of what you’re doing, to me, plays with that: revealing the not and the knots, taking what’s there and braiding it, taking what’s not there and weaving it in.
You recognize the importance of all of this in poetry and specifically in your own poetry. So, in that recognition, after talking to reporters endlessly, and throughout promoting the book, when you saw The Tradition in its final form, did you recognize the significance of the collection? Did you sense something remarkable was happening?
JERICHO BROWN: I know that I had a very different experience. I’ve been writing poems for a long time and I stand behind all three books. And, because I stand behind all three books, I know I had a significantly unique experience writing The Tradition because it were as if I were overtaken and overwhelmed in some cases, with some poems. And I understood that something special was happening to me in terms of my awareness and in terms of my ability to tap into my own intuition.
You know when you are writing, you make use of, yes, skill and talent, but also the “you know when it is right when you know it is right!” And, of course, with my students I explain why something is not working – but for me? I don’t have time! I’m trying to finish a draft! So, it gets cut. ((laughter)) I knew that was happening. I wrote half of the book very quickly. In entire 24 periods. You know, I would be writing, and I would stop to go and work on something else or go to the gym or meet with a student or give a reading, and then I would go right back to writing. You know, that’s it. Writing all day and all night long. Those were signals to me that I was doing exactly what I have always wanted to do. And feeling at the height of something I had always wanted to feel. Not that I can’t feel more, but as an artist it was one of the best writing feelings. And I understood that.
And I was pleased with the poems themselves. I was getting at things that I hadn’t gotten at before. Not even just subject matter, though, yes, subject matter-wise, but something in terms of the ways in which I was speaking in the poems with voice, the work I was doing with voice, with carrying several tones throughout a single poem. The work I was doing with lines, sort of experimentation with longer and shorter lines. The ways I was thinking about the sonnet.
You recognize the importance of all of this in poetry and specifically in your own poetry. So, in that recognition, after talking to reporters endlessly, and throughout promoting the book, when you saw The Tradition in its final form, did you recognize the significance of the collection? Did you sense something remarkable was happening?
JERICHO BROWN: I know that I had a very different experience. I’ve been writing poems for a long time and I stand behind all three books. And, because I stand behind all three books, I know I had a significantly unique experience writing The Tradition because it were as if I were overtaken and overwhelmed in some cases, with some poems. And I understood that something special was happening to me in terms of my awareness and in terms of my ability to tap into my own intuition.
You know when you are writing, you make use of, yes, skill and talent, but also the “you know when it is right when you know it is right!” And, of course, with my students I explain why something is not working – but for me? I don’t have time! I’m trying to finish a draft! So, it gets cut. ((laughter)) I knew that was happening. I wrote half of the book very quickly. In entire 24 periods. You know, I would be writing, and I would stop to go and work on something else or go to the gym or meet with a student or give a reading, and then I would go right back to writing. You know, that’s it. Writing all day and all night long. Those were signals to me that I was doing exactly what I have always wanted to do. And feeling at the height of something I had always wanted to feel. Not that I can’t feel more, but as an artist it was one of the best writing feelings. And I understood that.
And I was pleased with the poems themselves. I was getting at things that I hadn’t gotten at before. Not even just subject matter, though, yes, subject matter-wise, but something in terms of the ways in which I was speaking in the poems with voice, the work I was doing with voice, with carrying several tones throughout a single poem. The work I was doing with lines, sort of experimentation with longer and shorter lines. The ways I was thinking about the sonnet.
I knew I wasn’t just doing little experiences, but that they were successes. And, you know this, the poem is the achievement, the writing of the poem is the joy. The fact of the poem is the achievement.
So, for me, putting the book together and turning it in and going through revisions with editors and working on the cover with the book designer, all of that was pleasurable, which is why I understood I had something very special. I think part of the reason why it was special was because I had totally blocked out that it could be special to anyone else. I didn’t care, Abriana! ((laughter)) I don’t know why I didn’t care.
Actually, I think I know why I didn’t care. You know, my last book, The New Testament, did really well, and got a lot of attention. It was a book that, in spite of how well it did, and how much attention it got, I really did not feel the level of gratitude that I should have. I kept looking for some magical notice from the outside world that I had written a good book. When each notice came, for whatever reason, it was never enough for me. From that experience, I learned that behavior was a kind of insanity that I needed to help. I thought, if I’m not operating out of gratitude, then I’m not operating. The only way I can operate out of gratitude is if I can be thankful for my poems, not because of some idea of how the outside world should receive them, but because they doing those things that I mentioned before: that I’m experimenting and I’m making goals for myself as I write the poems.
When the book came out and it got all of this attention and continues to get, I mean The Tradition is like, I can’t control her anymore! ((laughter)).
So, for me, putting the book together and turning it in and going through revisions with editors and working on the cover with the book designer, all of that was pleasurable, which is why I understood I had something very special. I think part of the reason why it was special was because I had totally blocked out that it could be special to anyone else. I didn’t care, Abriana! ((laughter)) I don’t know why I didn’t care.
Actually, I think I know why I didn’t care. You know, my last book, The New Testament, did really well, and got a lot of attention. It was a book that, in spite of how well it did, and how much attention it got, I really did not feel the level of gratitude that I should have. I kept looking for some magical notice from the outside world that I had written a good book. When each notice came, for whatever reason, it was never enough for me. From that experience, I learned that behavior was a kind of insanity that I needed to help. I thought, if I’m not operating out of gratitude, then I’m not operating. The only way I can operate out of gratitude is if I can be thankful for my poems, not because of some idea of how the outside world should receive them, but because they doing those things that I mentioned before: that I’m experimenting and I’m making goals for myself as I write the poems.
When the book came out and it got all of this attention and continues to get, I mean The Tradition is like, I can’t control her anymore! ((laughter)).
ABRIANA JETTÉ: Let her go! ((laughter))
JERICHO BROWN: Yeah, you know it’s actually quite scary because I’m working on a poem, and I haven’t been writing a lot lately, which always feels awful, because when you’re a poet and you’re not making poems, you get to thinking is it over? Did I just write my last poem, and did I not celebrate because I didn’t know? ((laughter)) So it’s scary.
JERICHO BROWN: Yeah, you know it’s actually quite scary because I’m working on a poem, and I haven’t been writing a lot lately, which always feels awful, because when you’re a poet and you’re not making poems, you get to thinking is it over? Did I just write my last poem, and did I not celebrate because I didn’t know? ((laughter)) So it’s scary.
ABRIANA JETTÉ: Yes, especially because you feel that joy.
JERICHO BROWN: Yeah. And it’s also completely scary to have a book do so well. It’s what you want, but it’s completely scary. Do you know the first print run was 10,000 copies? I thought it was a bad idea. I was like “why?” I’ll never forget them telling me that. And I think that’s where I began to understand, “Oh, my press has expectations of this book”, and when I asked myself “why?” I thought, well, it must be because of the book. They would have no other reason. Right?
Michael Wiegers and all of the editors at Copper Canyon, our Public Relations person Laura Buccieri, they all really believed in the book and they stood by it and worked for it being a beautiful book and getting in as many hands as possible.
The book came out on April 2 and we went into our second printing on April 3. ((laughter))
JERICHO BROWN: Yeah. And it’s also completely scary to have a book do so well. It’s what you want, but it’s completely scary. Do you know the first print run was 10,000 copies? I thought it was a bad idea. I was like “why?” I’ll never forget them telling me that. And I think that’s where I began to understand, “Oh, my press has expectations of this book”, and when I asked myself “why?” I thought, well, it must be because of the book. They would have no other reason. Right?
Michael Wiegers and all of the editors at Copper Canyon, our Public Relations person Laura Buccieri, they all really believed in the book and they stood by it and worked for it being a beautiful book and getting in as many hands as possible.
The book came out on April 2 and we went into our second printing on April 3. ((laughter))
ABRIANA JETTÉ: Wow. Amazing!
JERICHO BROWN: Yeah! I was like, “What is going on?”
JERICHO BROWN: Yeah! I was like, “What is going on?”
That day, I was giving a reading and fighting with people on Twitter! ((laughter)) There was a lot going on! ((laughter)) I had just finished a tweet that said, “I AM MAD AT YOU. You get on my nerves!” (or something like that!), and I was getting on the elevator to go downstairs, and I answered the phone, and on the other line was Michael Wiegers telling me that they made the call because they needed more books. I was like “What!” ((laughter)) “How could you need more books?” That was a moment. In that moment, I realized something was going on.
In a way, I hadn’t had the opportunity, even then, to enjoy the thing that was going on. I was wondering why, and I realized that I had decided that whatever happened with The Tradition, I would be responsible for it in terms of promotion. I wasn’t going to wait on something or someone else or some other institution to do the work of promoting the book for me. So, with the help of my booking agent and Copper Canyon and friends, I had put together this crazy book tour from March 16 through Thanksgiving of 2019. During those months, I traveled to an average of three cities of week. I was embarrassed! ((laughter)).
In a way, I hadn’t had the opportunity, even then, to enjoy the thing that was going on. I was wondering why, and I realized that I had decided that whatever happened with The Tradition, I would be responsible for it in terms of promotion. I wasn’t going to wait on something or someone else or some other institution to do the work of promoting the book for me. So, with the help of my booking agent and Copper Canyon and friends, I had put together this crazy book tour from March 16 through Thanksgiving of 2019. During those months, I traveled to an average of three cities of week. I was embarrassed! ((laughter)).
ABRIANA JETTÉ: Wow. That’s intense.
JERICHO BROWN: Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking! I was embarrassed! ((laughter))
I did all of that because I felt: “Go all the way Jericho!” so that’s what I did. I went all the way!
People were having very affirming reactions to The Tradition and I could only retweet reactions, I couldn’t read them, I couldn’t really sit back.
Usually, when reviews come out, I do this thing where I say (jokingly), “Oh I didn’t read them,” but I really didn’t read them because there were so many! I noticed that there were so many reviews and I couldn’t even thank that person or that person or that person. The book was on all of these “Best of” lists, that felt good to me. It meant that feeling I was having when I was writing the book was indeed communicated to the book through readers. Which is what we hope for. We hope that’s true. So, it was great.
JERICHO BROWN: Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking! I was embarrassed! ((laughter))
I did all of that because I felt: “Go all the way Jericho!” so that’s what I did. I went all the way!
People were having very affirming reactions to The Tradition and I could only retweet reactions, I couldn’t read them, I couldn’t really sit back.
Usually, when reviews come out, I do this thing where I say (jokingly), “Oh I didn’t read them,” but I really didn’t read them because there were so many! I noticed that there were so many reviews and I couldn’t even thank that person or that person or that person. The book was on all of these “Best of” lists, that felt good to me. It meant that feeling I was having when I was writing the book was indeed communicated to the book through readers. Which is what we hope for. We hope that’s true. So, it was great.
I felt like very pleased with all of that and yet I did not expect the National Book Award, the National Book Circle Award, and, obviously, I didn’t say this at the time because I wanted to win them! ((laughter)) You know, I wanted to win the Pulitzer Prize.
ABRIANA JETTÉ: Maybe you thought, “Just one of them!”– but all of them! ((laughter))
JERICHO BROWN: Oh no, Abriana, I wanted all of them! You know me, I always want everything! I’m a good American in that way. ((laughter))
That’s it: I wanted it all, but I didn’t expect it all.
Because I really was writing this book from the heart, it meant I had to say some things I didn’t imagine institutions getting behind. I can imagine people getting behind it, but not that institutions would take the leap. Which is why I understood why I needed to get behind and push the book. So being a finalist for the National Book Award was a big surprise, because I was hoping to get to top ten to be honest with you. And then I got to the top five and I was, “Oh, God!” this is great. I can engineer what I want to do on this red carpet so I can make The New York Times! ((laughter)) I thought well, “What am I going to wear?” Because I wasn’t thinking I was going to win the award, I was thinking I need to look the best in pictures!
JERICHO BROWN: Oh no, Abriana, I wanted all of them! You know me, I always want everything! I’m a good American in that way. ((laughter))
That’s it: I wanted it all, but I didn’t expect it all.
Because I really was writing this book from the heart, it meant I had to say some things I didn’t imagine institutions getting behind. I can imagine people getting behind it, but not that institutions would take the leap. Which is why I understood why I needed to get behind and push the book. So being a finalist for the National Book Award was a big surprise, because I was hoping to get to top ten to be honest with you. And then I got to the top five and I was, “Oh, God!” this is great. I can engineer what I want to do on this red carpet so I can make The New York Times! ((laughter)) I thought well, “What am I going to wear?” Because I wasn’t thinking I was going to win the award, I was thinking I need to look the best in pictures!
ABRIANA JETTÉ: Well, now you have the awards and you look the best!
((laughter))
JERICHO BROWN: To answer you, yes. I had an awareness that The Tradition would have meaning for a lot of people. I have no way of knowing exactly what that meaning is in each person. I’m grateful for that and I’m happy to abandon it, which is what I have to do if I want to write more essays and more poems.
And there are other things I want to do, too. I want to take acting classes. There’s a lot in my life that I think about. I want to be able to get back to being able to do 100 burpees, and right now, I can’t get past 84! And I know that sounds trivial, especially when you put it in the context of writing poems people can turn to in the midst of police brutality, and yet, that’s important to me. I need to be able to be there for The Tradition in whatever way that book requires, the same way I would be for any of books, but I also need to be looking forward. I’ve got a life in front of me and I have a lot of writing to do.
And to be honest with you Abriana, I don’t think I’ve said enough. There is more for me to say about my relationship to femininity, about what that means for black people’s relationship to women, more particularly to transwomen and to transmen.
Part of the reason why I have the trouble I have with the police is because I want to be free. I want to be among a people who feel more free. I know with the presence of the police, as they are now, we can’t feel that way. There’s no way. Since there is no way to feel that way, I want what’s preventing it gone.
Also, when I say #BlackLivesMatter I’m saying that because I’m queer and I want to be included in that. I don’t want that to be hierarchal. I don’t want that to be about class or gender. I don’t want that to be about sexuality. The more we make strides for whatever it is we want, I have to be around to make sure that we are being as inclusive as possible when making those strides, and that black people aren’t getting beat up by black people for no reason. So, I have things to say about that because there are ways that I have been complicit in that even without being aware of being complicit.
It’s not being right or being wrong that makes a poem, but when you’re both. When you can find out that you yourself have been right and wrong about the same thing, then you have something to write about. So, I have things percolating. I’ve got some lines. They ain’t no good, just yet, but they’re there! (laughter)
You know, there are just things that have to be said.
((laughter))
JERICHO BROWN: To answer you, yes. I had an awareness that The Tradition would have meaning for a lot of people. I have no way of knowing exactly what that meaning is in each person. I’m grateful for that and I’m happy to abandon it, which is what I have to do if I want to write more essays and more poems.
And there are other things I want to do, too. I want to take acting classes. There’s a lot in my life that I think about. I want to be able to get back to being able to do 100 burpees, and right now, I can’t get past 84! And I know that sounds trivial, especially when you put it in the context of writing poems people can turn to in the midst of police brutality, and yet, that’s important to me. I need to be able to be there for The Tradition in whatever way that book requires, the same way I would be for any of books, but I also need to be looking forward. I’ve got a life in front of me and I have a lot of writing to do.
And to be honest with you Abriana, I don’t think I’ve said enough. There is more for me to say about my relationship to femininity, about what that means for black people’s relationship to women, more particularly to transwomen and to transmen.
Part of the reason why I have the trouble I have with the police is because I want to be free. I want to be among a people who feel more free. I know with the presence of the police, as they are now, we can’t feel that way. There’s no way. Since there is no way to feel that way, I want what’s preventing it gone.
Also, when I say #BlackLivesMatter I’m saying that because I’m queer and I want to be included in that. I don’t want that to be hierarchal. I don’t want that to be about class or gender. I don’t want that to be about sexuality. The more we make strides for whatever it is we want, I have to be around to make sure that we are being as inclusive as possible when making those strides, and that black people aren’t getting beat up by black people for no reason. So, I have things to say about that because there are ways that I have been complicit in that even without being aware of being complicit.
It’s not being right or being wrong that makes a poem, but when you’re both. When you can find out that you yourself have been right and wrong about the same thing, then you have something to write about. So, I have things percolating. I’ve got some lines. They ain’t no good, just yet, but they’re there! (laughter)
You know, there are just things that have to be said.
ABRIANA JETTÉ: Absolutely. It’s like that experience you’ve described: being a man of God, but also watching footage of a police station burn and feeling some type of pleasure within it. That we have those contradictions in us, and they are not contradictions, they are us.
JERICHO BROWN: Exactly, exactly. And that’s why we’re here, you know? People are hard on poets and poets are hard on themselves, but we are so necessary to any present moment and to eternity in ways that no present moment can ever value or appreciate. The reason we are completely undervalued and the reasons our gifts are undervalued in the present moment is because people are not aware that their lives are being sustained by what we do. They just don’t know. They think it’s chicken and potatoes. Now you know this, and I know this: if someone has read “We Real Cool” or “The Road Not Taken”, it has changed them. People’s access to poetry is important to me because access to poetry means access to life or a better knowing of what it means to live.
JERICHO BROWN: Exactly, exactly. And that’s why we’re here, you know? People are hard on poets and poets are hard on themselves, but we are so necessary to any present moment and to eternity in ways that no present moment can ever value or appreciate. The reason we are completely undervalued and the reasons our gifts are undervalued in the present moment is because people are not aware that their lives are being sustained by what we do. They just don’t know. They think it’s chicken and potatoes. Now you know this, and I know this: if someone has read “We Real Cool” or “The Road Not Taken”, it has changed them. People’s access to poetry is important to me because access to poetry means access to life or a better knowing of what it means to live.
ABRIANA JETTÉ: This is amazing, Jericho.
Just one last question. I’m switching gears a bit, but still thinking about what you’ve just mentioned in terms of being poets, in the roles we play, and in the roles we play as professors. You’re the director of the #1 undergraduate creative writing program in the country.
JERICHO BROWN: IN THE WHOLE COUNTRY! Can’t none of these other girls keep up!
((laughter))
ABRIANA JETTÉ: We can’t!
((laughter))
JERICHO BROWN: In the whole country! Let me say it out loud: I call out Oberlin! I call out Bennington! All of these other young ladies cannot keep up and I apologize that you are experiencing the envy that you feel!
Just one last question. I’m switching gears a bit, but still thinking about what you’ve just mentioned in terms of being poets, in the roles we play, and in the roles we play as professors. You’re the director of the #1 undergraduate creative writing program in the country.
JERICHO BROWN: IN THE WHOLE COUNTRY! Can’t none of these other girls keep up!
((laughter))
ABRIANA JETTÉ: We can’t!
((laughter))
JERICHO BROWN: In the whole country! Let me say it out loud: I call out Oberlin! I call out Bennington! All of these other young ladies cannot keep up and I apologize that you are experiencing the envy that you feel!
ABRIANA JETTÉ: Not envy! We’re looking up to you. We’re learning from you!
JERICHO BROWN: We have the best faculty anywhere. We put MFA faculties to shame! Make sure that’s in there.
((laughter))
But. Now, wouldn’t that be interesting? That would be somewhere to put our energy. That’d be a nice place. Rather than being competitive about things that really don’t matter or that we really can’t control to actually work to use our budget and our institution’s funds to build our programs and compete with one another in the sense of: who can spread the most good news about literature?
JERICHO BROWN: We have the best faculty anywhere. We put MFA faculties to shame! Make sure that’s in there.
((laughter))
But. Now, wouldn’t that be interesting? That would be somewhere to put our energy. That’d be a nice place. Rather than being competitive about things that really don’t matter or that we really can’t control to actually work to use our budget and our institution’s funds to build our programs and compete with one another in the sense of: who can spread the most good news about literature?
ABRIANA JETTÉ: Yes. That support. Circulating good energy around the community.
JERICHO BROWN: Right.
JERICHO BROWN: Right.
ABRIANA JETTÉ: But still, you are #1! And, this past semester, I know that my pedagogy has really changed in what I’m trying to use in the classroom or be able to do. I’m searching for more open educational resources so that my students don’t struggle to afford an education throughout a pandemic. And what you’re mentioning sparks that – in taking a budget and spreading it in different, more charitable ways. Is that something that you imagine happening the Fall post pandemic? Do you feel this shift in education and this experience has changed your teaching?
JERICHO BROWN: For me, the truth is, I’m really just trying to see how long this lasts. We have to be really careful. As a Director of a program, I have to be careful. Our students need us now in a bigger and larger way. They need us more they needed us before, and they need us to educate ourselves. For instance, this semester we are being asked to teach in ways that some of us never imagined having to teach. We had to jump in and do it real fast, I mean, within a week. And also as a Director, I’m not only there for the students, I’m there as a liaison for the faculty.
Most of my faculty have children in school and they are trying to figure out how to homeschool their children, they’re trying to figure out how to complete their teaching, and they’re trying to figure out how to complete their writing now that their children are home – all the time. So, there’s a way we have to be there for our students in larger ways than we had the past and there is a way where we need self-care, and I need to be able protect the fact that my faculty has other work other than teaching and programing. So, I’m trying to walk a line.
I’m creating different kinds of programs that I hope will supplement our teaching since we expect our teaching to be very new. We are all quite nervous actually that we won’t not be as good in the classroom, since we might not be in the classroom. So, we will see how things turn out.
If we can create programming on Zoom, where we pay people to come and talk about writing poetry and reading poetry, if we can create that content than maybe we create space for the faculty to be a little more free than if they were doing everything. It’s all a brainstorming game for everyone in every industry right now.
JERICHO BROWN: For me, the truth is, I’m really just trying to see how long this lasts. We have to be really careful. As a Director of a program, I have to be careful. Our students need us now in a bigger and larger way. They need us more they needed us before, and they need us to educate ourselves. For instance, this semester we are being asked to teach in ways that some of us never imagined having to teach. We had to jump in and do it real fast, I mean, within a week. And also as a Director, I’m not only there for the students, I’m there as a liaison for the faculty.
Most of my faculty have children in school and they are trying to figure out how to homeschool their children, they’re trying to figure out how to complete their teaching, and they’re trying to figure out how to complete their writing now that their children are home – all the time. So, there’s a way we have to be there for our students in larger ways than we had the past and there is a way where we need self-care, and I need to be able protect the fact that my faculty has other work other than teaching and programing. So, I’m trying to walk a line.
I’m creating different kinds of programs that I hope will supplement our teaching since we expect our teaching to be very new. We are all quite nervous actually that we won’t not be as good in the classroom, since we might not be in the classroom. So, we will see how things turn out.
If we can create programming on Zoom, where we pay people to come and talk about writing poetry and reading poetry, if we can create that content than maybe we create space for the faculty to be a little more free than if they were doing everything. It’s all a brainstorming game for everyone in every industry right now.
One of the things that I love is that when I have these conversations with people like T Cooper, or Joseph Skibell or Hank Kilbanoff or Robyn Schiff or Tayari Jones or Tiphanie Yanique, when I have these conversation with them, they are always interested in doing the upmost. They want to get this right. They understand it’s a special moment. They haven’t checked out and I appreciate that. They are inspiring me to me because of that.
ABRIANA JETTÉ: That’s because they’re in such good hands. It’s amazing that you have these considerations about both sides, not every industry, not every institution, not ever director does that.
Jericho, I would keep you on the phone forever. This has been so amazing, and I feel so changed by what you’ve said.
Thank you so much for you time today and for everything you’ve been writing and sharing over the past five weeks.
JERICHO BROWN: Thank you that’s sweet. Thank you so much.
[Ed: Seven poems by Jericho Brown were published in Stay Thirsty Poets - Vol. I (2019), curated by Abriana Jetté, more than a year before he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.]
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Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Abriana Jetté is the editor of the anthology series Stay Thirsty Poets, as well as a poet, essayist, and educator. Her work has appeared in The Seneca Review, Plume Poetry Journal, Poetry New Zealand, River Teeth, among others. Her research interests include creative writing studies and alternative pedagogies. She currently teaches at Kean University and is a regular contributor to Stay Thirsty Magazine.