{"id":35935,"date":"2019-03-29T11:33:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-29T18:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=35935"},"modified":"2025-02-21T09:33:32","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T17:33:32","slug":"a-conversation-with-jericho-brown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/a-conversation-with-jericho-brown\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 87: A Talk with Jericho Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"
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March 29, 2019<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

JOSH ANTHONY, HANNAH COBB, CAYLIE HERRMANN, & KARI RUECKERT<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A TALK WITH JERICHO BROWN<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
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TERSE AND BOTH RHETORICAL AND LYRICAL, <\/strong>Jericho Brown’s poems explore race and sexuality with an unflinching gaze. Sometimes formal and always smart, the poems are infused with a sense of grace. Subjects that feel at first deeply personal become part of the experiences of a greater we. At the core of Brown\u2019s poems is a call for love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A New York Times<\/em> book reviewer writes of The Tradition<\/em>, \u201cIn Brown\u2019s poems, the body at risk\u2014the infected body, the abused body, the black body, the body in eros\u2014is 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.\u201d Yusef Komanyakaa writes of his collection The New Testament<\/em>, \u201cThe lyrical clarity in this poignant collection approaches ascension. And here the sacred and profane embrace. . . . Naked feeling is never abstracted, and this poet knows how to see into the dark.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jericho Brown is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown\u2019s first book, Please<\/em> (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament<\/em> (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition<\/em>, was a Pulitzer Prize winner; it also won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, <\/em>The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, <\/em>The Paris Review, TIME<\/em> magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry<\/em>. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We met Jericho outside a coffee shop in Portland, the chaos of the AWP conference swirling around us. We talked about formal elements in poetry\u2014in particular his own created form, the duplex\u2014race, the blues, prayer, vulnerability, and love. Jericho was popular among the passersby, and we got to eavesdrop on several enthusiastic conversations with friends and fans. Brown was charming, down to earth, candid and open; he kept us laughing with his raw and honest humor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JOSH ANTHONY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are you reading right now, and what do you look for in a book?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JERICHO BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a lot of writers who are really good . . . I don\u2019t like this question. I want that in print, that I don\u2019t like that question, but not that I have a problem with you asking me the question. I just think there\u2019s something that happens where people try to figure on you based on your answer to this question, and I don\u2019t like being figured on, you know what I mean? Because for some people there\u2019s a right answer to this question. What I\u2019m really reading right now is George Oppen. I\u2019m reading Keith Wilson\u2019s new book. I think it\u2019s really beautiful. I\u2019m reading Vievee Francis all the time. I\u2019m reading Natalie Scenters-Zapico. Lyn Hejinian\u2019s last book\u2014y\u2019all should read it. It\u2019s really good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was getting a PhD, I was reading a book of poetry a day. I was going to the independent bookstore and if it was there, I was going to read it. I thought it was my responsibility, particularly when it came to Black poets, to know everything. So I\u2019ve read a lot of books. If I don\u2019t think something\u2019s good, I don\u2019t feel like I have to finish it. But I also read systematically. I could read anthologies and find poets that way. When you\u2019re reading an anthology, you can sort of be like, \u201cNo. No. No. Oh! There\u2019s something. Look!\u201d I think I found the poet Ai in an anthology. Then I read all of Ai\u2019s books. I had a teacher who used to tell us to figure out who our favorite poet was, who you feel you\u2019re close to. If you read all of that poet\u2019s work, then you\u2019ll be able to glean who their favorite poet was. Then what you should do is read all of that poet\u2019s work, then you\u2019ll be able to glean who their favorite poets were, and you should read all their work, and that\u2019ll take you all the way back to the Bible. You\u2019ll always have something to read, and you\u2019ll get a history of poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter how widely I read, I know that there are people out there trying to nail me down, and I don\u2019t want to be nailed down. And I don\u2019t want to nail anybody down. People have aesthetic prejudices. People try to find aesthetic prejudices in other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HANNAH ENGEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you see reinvention as a way to not be nailed down?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, that\u2019s not what I mean when I\u2019m talking about not wanting to be nailed down. As a Black poet, as a southern poet, as a gay poet, as somebody who is comfortable in all of my identities, I want for you to find out as a reader that that identity becomes of use to you, whether you are queer or not. That you are and are not in that identity. People really think that in order to like a poem, it has to be relatable. It\u2019s so dumb. What\u2019s relatable about Wallace fucking Stevens? If you don\u2019t like ice cream, I guess you can\u2019t read \u201cThe Emperor of Ice Cream.\u201d It\u2019s so fucking stupid, this idea, \u201cI have to find myself in the thing and then it means I like the thing.\u201d That is the whitest shit I\u2019ve ever heard in my life! Stuff is not good because you\u2019re there. That\u2019s crazy! I don\u2019t like when people feel like they can cordon you off, given an identity or given an aesthetic, then they can say, \u201cOh, I already know I don\u2019t like that.\u201d Bitch, read my poems! You ain\u2019t read my poems, so you can\u2019t say that. When I really look at it, it turns out not to be about aesthetic or identity at all, it ends up being about friendship, it ends up being about something more social.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So you were talking about reinvention. I think the proper stance to being a poet in the world is that you\u2019re always a little mistrustful of whatever you set down. If you set down something, an idea, if your poems are proving a certain poetic, by the time you write a book, you should be doubting that poetic. My students are always trying to do something I tell them they can\u2019t get away with doing. But then my job becomes, \u201cLet\u2019s figure out if you can do that in a poem.\u201d That\u2019s what I mean by reinvention. You need an idea of what you think poetry is to write your poems, but that idea always must be changing if you\u2019re going to keep writing poems because after a while you keep writing that same poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also think it\u2019s a good idea that whenever we write a poem, somewhere in our writing we\u2019re also thinking, \u201cI want to change my idea of what poetry is in this poem.\u201d What I tell my students about revision and clich\u00e9 is that when they come upon the clich\u00e9, they don\u2019t have to stop writing and lose their minds. You can keep going, but you need to recognize that you\u2019ve written a clich\u00e9. If you can say, \u201cOh shit, I said it\u2019s raining cats and dogs,\u201d you might need to write that to get to the next line, which is killer. If you write, \u201cIt\u2019s raining cats and dogs,\u201d and then you write another line, and it\u2019s killer, and we\u2019re in workshop, and you bring me the poem and it still has \u201cIt\u2019s raining cats and dogs\u201d in it, we got a problem, because that means you don\u2019t know the difference between the clich\u00e9 and the killer line. That\u2019s gonna stress me out! If you can have that kind of knowledge on the line level, I think you can have that kind of knowledge on the word level, on the poem level, and on the book level, too: \u201cThere are ways of being in a poem that I\u2019ve already done or that have already been done, and maybe I\u2019ll want to find new ways.\u201d You don\u2019t have to find new ways to do everything in the same poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a whole lecture on penultimates because I think they are actually more important than endings. At least in American poetry something happens right before the end of a poem where everything goes crazy, or where things get really psychological, or where the language slips just a little bit, and it\u2019s that slippage that directs toward the end of a poem. In Frost, for instance, it always happens with rhyme. In \u201cFire and Ice,\u201d he brings up the new rhyme at the penultimate moment of the poem\u2014all the rhymes had been the same before that. And in \u201cThe Road Not Taken,\u201d for instance, it\u2019s \u201cand I\u2014\/I,\u201d so there\u2019s a certain kind of double rhyme; he makes a literal enactment of a sigh. Komunyakaa, in \u201cWe Never Know,\u201d says \u201cI fell in love\u201d in that penultimate moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ANTHONY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re really enthusiastic with your rhyming schemes\u2014maybe not schemes, but how you move around with the language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, there\u2019s always been, in every book, a great deal of internal rhyme, because I\u2019m interested in the music of the line and the sound of the line and rhythm. That has a lot to do with what I think poems are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CAYLIE HERRMANN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love \u201cBullet Points\u201d and hearing the musicality behind it while you were reading. I often don\u2019t notice rhymes when they\u2019re on the page because it\u2019s not what I look for in a poem, and it seemed very different from the rest of what you do. Why did you make that shift in this book?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GOLDBARTH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of my writing life, both have occurred, but it seems healthier if I\u2019m simply reading for pleasure, not specifically trawling through things just to find an idea for a poem. I\u2019m reading something, and, bingo, that day or three years later, a little light goes off in my head, \u201cOh, yeah, I\u2019d like to explore this.\u201d To that extent, \u201cresearch\u201d sounds too calculated in its implications. Oh, there\u2019s some research of course; but often it\u2019s more like being open to a timely shout-out from my memory storage, my muse node.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a question about the balance between inspiration and research. I thought of the balance between Leeuwenhoek and Vermeer in some of your work and how they\u2019re connected, but one is more scientific, one more artistic. I wonder if you feel you owe a loyalty to one of those disciplines more than the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was reading a lot of Gwendolyn Brooks, and I noticed that there are times in her career where she chooses a very stark, obvious rhyme, sometimes on monosyllabic words. It seems like she was trying to get at something that was at the root of us, something that was childlike in us. An example of it is a poem called \u201cSong in the Front Yard,\u201d which is literally in the voice of a little girl. Something about that lends itself to song, lends itself to the ballad, and when you have so called \u201cdifficult material,\u201d it\u2019s a way of veiling it in what seems to be simplicity, so that if something comes to you as song, you can\u2019t refuse it because you\u2019re enjoying it, no matter if what\u2019s being said might be something you want to refuse. You have to deal with an ambiguity as you are reading or hearing the poem\u2014\u201cI don\u2019t want to hear that, but I want to hear that\u201d\u2014and you\u2019re trying to figure out why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KARI RUECKERT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is that childlikeness something you try to inhabit in your own work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. I\u2019m interested in telling the truth. I\u2019m interested in writing adult poetry. I want people to deal with the reality we deal with. I want my poems to be an opportunity to deal with those realities. I like for people to be honest about our bodies; I\u2019d like us to be honest in particular about women\u2019s bodies. I think that stuff feels unpalatable to people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of what I talk about is pretty regular stuff, like Black people are getting shot by the police, or fearing getting shot by the police, or us knowing that Black people could get shot by the police. Why would that be controversial? There\u2019s a way a child learns information\u2014you know, how you can trust children but you can\u2019t trust them, because they will say what\u2019s true, because they don\u2019t know what you\u2019re not supposed to say. That\u2019s really what I was interested in getting at in this particular book [The Tradition<\/em>].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a poem by Sharon Olds called \u201cMay 1968,\u201d which I really love. It has this moment where there\u2019s this woman on the groundcounting, and right after that, she makes the revelation that if her period doesn\u2019t come that night, she must be pregnant. I\u2019ve been teaching this poem since 2002. When I ask the men in my class what she\u2019s counting, they don\u2019t know. They\u2019re like, \u201cI have no clue.\u201d She literally says, if my period did not come tonight, I\u2019m pregnant. But they want to fuck, and I imagine the students in my class don\u2019t want to get nobody pregnant, but they don\u2019t know what she\u2019s counting. How is that? These are 18-, 19-, 20-, 21-, 22-year-old people. All the women in my class know what she\u2019s counting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ENGEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re talking about poetry as telling truths about the body, but you\u2019ve also mentioned poetry as coming out of the body and from your lived bodily experience. What does being a poet look like, as far as how you live bodily?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I\u2019m in the act of writing a poem, I don\u2019t know what the poem is going to be about because I think that\u2019s a bad idea. I\u2019m interested in following the language for what it will tell me, the sounds of the language\u2014that\u2019s how I write. I try to put myself in the position of whomever the speaker is in the moment of that particular poem. So, like, in the track \u201cSummertime,\u201d I try to put myself in the position of Janis Joplin. \u201cBullet Points\u201d is in many ways a poem of prayer. What does it sound like in that intimate moment of prayer when you\u2019re asking for something that you really need? If I do that well\u2014this is why it\u2019s sort of funny for me to be writing in front of people\u2014then I look certain ways, literally, while I\u2019m doing it. If I\u2019m angry in a poem, I can start hitting the computer because I\u2019m trying to become the thing I\u2019m doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to be a poet, or how to live as a poet in the body, is going to be different for each poet. For me, it\u2019s very important to get out of my head and into my body in a physical way. So I do one of two things in the morning: I wake up and I do one hundred burpees, then I try to write for two hours. Or I wake up and I eat, and then I write for two hours. That\u2019s my writing day. If I\u2019m really working on something, I wake up and I eat and I write for two hours, and then I go to the gym. During the moment when I\u2019m doing burpees or I\u2019m trying to pick up something heavy, I\u2019m not thinking about anything because I\u2019m scared that this weight is going to fall on me and I can\u2019t have my mind on anything but that. That way, when I revisit the work, it\u2019s new to me. Before I write, I\u2019ll pray. I\u2019ll have a mediation period. I have a time where I read a little bit of a book, which will make me feel more grateful for who and what I am and what I have and where I am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ENGEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does prayer look like for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll read something either by somebody like Earnest Holmes or Michael Bernard Beckwith, and I\u2019ll read until I get to a sentence that makes me feel enlightened somehow. Once I get to a sentence like that, I put it down, and then I pray in the way that I was taught in my church. I recognize that there is a source, a God, whatever I want to call Him, that particular day. Him, Her, It. I recognize that God has in Him whatever I am affirming in that moment. If I am affirming health, or if I am affirming prosperity, or if I am affirming courage, or if I am affirming time, or if I\u2019m affirming peace, I say, \u201cThere is a God, and everything peaceful in this world comes from one source.\u201d I\u2019m doing this in front of my big window in my living room, so I can really, like, see peace, because I have a yard now and I live in a quiet neighborhood, which everybody doesn\u2019t always have. Then I say, \u201cWell, if that God is everywhere, then that God must be in me, and therefore peace is in me.\u201d Or whatever I\u2019m affirming is in me. Then I say some things that are in the world every day of my life where I\u2019m not seeing peace, but if I think about it, there is peace there somewhere. And I sort of affirm that out loud. And then I give thanks for the realization of that, for understanding that it\u2019s there in ways I didn\u2019t understand before. Then I release it. I let it go. That\u2019s how I pray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I learned that through The Science of Mind, which is where I go to church, the Spiritual Living Center of Atlanta. I grew up in a very Christian church in Louisiana, but I started to New Thought teaching when I started going to Michael Bernard Beckwith\u2019s church, Agape, when I lived in California. New Thought is a movement that started in the 1800s; Ralph Waldo Emerson is thought of as one of its progenitors or founders. Book people, literature people who find their way toward some sort of spirituality are of interest to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HERRMANN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In The Tradition<\/em>, you started this form\u2014the duplex. To me it feels almost like a crown of couplets. How did you come up with that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a crown, you go from the first line to the last line, then the last line repeats. I kept thinking, what happens if you just get rid of everything in between the repeats? And then I tried it, and it looked bad. And I was like, there\u2019s got to be a way to make this a poem, to make it work. If I can figure out how to merge the formal turns of a sonnet with the juxtapositions of a ghazal with the tone of the blues, if I can put those three forms together, then I\u2019ll have this mutt of a form\u2014just like the person that I feel like I am in the world, a mutt, this person who for whatever reason, when encountered I\u2019m sort of misunderstood. People are like, \u201cWhat\u2019s happening? What are you? Which thing do you want to be?\u201d I have all these forms that I put together to make what I call the duplex, which is actually one house, but with two or maybe three houses in it. This is the best name for the merger of things that are whole and remain whole even afterwards but with a wall between them. How do you live together with a wall between you is something that I kept asking myself about these couplets\u2014sometimes disparate, sometimes leaning into one another. I wanted some to be narrative and some to be much more lyric and to really live off of their metaphors. I wanted to see how many I could do, and so I worked on a lot of them. And then Michael Wiegers, my editor, told me I needed another one. But the other ones I had sitting around I didn\u2019t like. I was so tired. I was like, I can\u2019t look at another duplex. I was really frustrated with Michael. I\u2019ll show his ass. So instead I wrote a cento [\u201cDuplex: Cento\u201d], which used all the lines from all the duplexes in the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was working on these poems, I was in a workshop led by Mark Jarman and A. E. Stallings. I really wanted to talk to some people who had worked with form. Because you have to learn a thing in order to do a thing. Obviously, I had written formal poems before, but I knew this was going to be a different kind of an endeavor, and I wanted to really commit to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HERRMANN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you intend for it to be something that other people can use?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, I want everybody to write a duplex. It\u2019d make me so happy. I want to see duplexes in every journal I pick up! I want a duplex in The New Yorker<\/em> every other month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ANTHONY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I keep thinking about the blues, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s really tonally important to me. When I read \u201cTheme for an English B\u201d by Langston Hughes, I just remembered thinking, \u201cThis is a blues poem that is also somehow a narrative poem, and it\u2019s also not using the blues structure.\u201d There are other writers who are good at that. I\u2019ve always been thinking about how to get that tone into my poems. There\u2019s a poem by Hughes called \u201cThe Island\u201d that I think does it, and a poem called \u201cSuicide\u2019s Note,\u201d which I have an essay about online\u2014I think it\u2019s called \u201cTo Be Asked for a Kiss.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ENGEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I read an interview where you were talking about the transition from Please<\/em> to The New Testament<\/em>, about how you wanted to stay away from musical language at first when you were writing The New Testament<\/em> because Please <\/em>was so musical. You said you wanted a new lexicon for The New Testament.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I still wanted the poems to be musical, although it is true that the poems in The New Testament <\/em>lean toward a certain kind of discursiveness, some digression, which also meant a certain kind of flatter language sometimes, which I was interested in trying because I had become enamored of the work of people like Claudia Rankine and Marie Howe and Lyn Hejinian and Anne Carson, who were making use of a flatter language that wasn\u2019t as tinged with music as what I had been interested in before. I see music as the artifice of Please.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ENGEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you find that for The Tradition<\/em> you developed another new lexicon of words that you were coming back to?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For The Tradition<\/em>, there probably are words that I was coming back to, but not as consciously. When I notice those words return, I push toward them, but in Please<\/em>, those words are different in terms of the world-building of the book. There are different factors that go into the world-building of The Tradition<\/em>, and those factors have more to do with what I was trying to figure out in poetry. In The New Testament<\/em>, and in Please<\/em>, what I\u2019m trying to figure out with poetry is not necessarily part of the world-building of the book. In Please, <\/em>I\u2019m just trying to figure out how to write a damn poem. In The New Testament<\/em>, I\u2019m trying to figure out how to be more discursive in a poem or how to write a longer line. In The Tradition<\/em>, I was thinking, how direct can a poem be and still be a poem? I was thinking about metonymy as a corrective to metaphor. Can I write poems that are based in the metonym, rather than the metaphor? So that\u2019s why you have these poems like \u201cThe Card Tables\u201d and \u201cThe Rabbits\u201d where what I mean to do is look at the thing for the thing, as opposed to comparing it to something else, to bring it to the reader, to allow the reader to make whatever assumptions they\u2019re going to make based on the thing, without me saying it\u2019s like something else. And I\u2019m such a metaphoric poet\u2014which is hilarious to me, I\u2019ve turned out to be such a metaphoric poet\u2014but I have to say I wasn\u2019t before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You watch Beyonc\u00e9 a long time, you see her improve on something, you see her trying to learn to do a thing, and she gets better at doing that thing, and the same thing with Lebron James, or anybody you can pay attention to. One of the things I\u2019m wanting to figure out was, how do you use a metaphor? And I think I\u2019ve finally figured it out. And then after I figured it out, I couldn\u2019t get rid of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ENGEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So then you were trying to figure out how not to use a metaphor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exactly. The metonym was what I was trying to make, and then there are these poems titled that thing that\u2019s sort of obvious in the world. And then there are the duplex poems, which, they\u2019re part of the world because you know you can come across a duplex. Right? I\u2019m interested in that as a title because I imagine that when people see the word \u201cduplex\u201d they see a duplex. And so they have to imagine whatever happens in the poem happening in whatever world they think a duplex is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUECKERT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You talk a lot about vulnerability as a poet. I see vulnerability as something that\u2019s internal, being vulnerable to yourself when you write a poem, and also externally when you share it with the world. How do both those experiences work together?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know how they work together. I\u2019ll say this one thing: it is really nice to find yourself in the middle of questions of integrity in ways that you may not have found yourself in the past because you didn\u2019t know to question when you had integrity. Vulnerability in poetry is interesting to me because vulnerability is what leads to integrity. If you are really allowing your poems access to everything you know and everything you\u2019ve done and everything you believe, then anything can appear in your poem. And you\u2019ll be like, \u201cOh shit, I just wrote that thing.\u201d But then there\u2019s an opportunity there because once you\u2019ve written it, you have to decide if that\u2019s who you really are: \u201cI said this, do I believe that?\u201d So simply having a question and trying to answer it, through the poem or in yourself, is the process of figuring out what you believe, understanding that what you believe is going to be based in your ethics and your morals and your values and what you think of as right or wrong, what you think of as gray or whatever. When I\u2019m talking about being vulnerable, that\u2019s what I\u2019m doing. I\u2019m making myself available to the poem as much as possible, and then dealing with what that means when it\u2019s on the page by finishing it and allowing it to work on my life. Once you say something in a poem, you as the poet, maybe I shouldn\u2019t say you, but I as the poet, have to say, \u201cWell, that\u2019s how I have to live, then.\u201d I just can\u2019t be out there saying that if I\u2019m not going to make that revelation a part of my life. So once I make the revelation a part of my life, then questions of integrity come up because I\u2019m going to be asked to do things I can\u2019t do anymore because I think that\u2019s crazy now. I have to realize that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being vulnerable to people is a little different. I don\u2019t think I have the same questions about that in the world, probably because of my upbringing and because I had priorities for a long time. It\u2019s not so much that I feel like I\u2019m vulnerable, I just feel like I\u2019ve tried my best to build a world where I can love people and people can love me, and I can trust that I am loved. You know, sometimes you don\u2019t feel that way. But I always have to remember that when I don\u2019t feel that way, that\u2019s anxiety, it\u2019s a conspiracy theory of one, telling myself that I don\u2019t have nobody or don\u2019t nobody love me. There are people who\u2019ve been really supportive of what I do, and I have gotten signs of appreciation. And I think somehow that\u2019s enough for me to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what I really know. I know that poems changed and saved my life, and that they continue to. I know that. Since I was six or seven years old, poems were doing work on me. And I imagine, \u201cI like this poem, because I\u2019m writing this poem, it feels good,\u201d and I imagine it can someday do work on somebody. When it does, it\u2019ll be cool. I\u2019ll be like, \u201cYay, it did work on somebody,\u201d if that comes back on me. I might not ever get to know, and I don\u2019t need to know. So being vulnerable is easier. Maybe it\u2019s easier for narcissistic reasons. But I think, \u201cIt worked for me, it\u2019ll work for someone else.\u201d It\u2019s harder for me to be vulnerable to myself. Being vulnerable to other people\u2014I don\u2019t really have a choice. I have to stand behind my work. I have to do what I can to help it be in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUECKERT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You said in your interview with Divedapper that the representation of the self is a representation of the truth of the human race. And it reminded me of what James Baldwin said when he said, \u201cThe artist\u2019s struggle for integrity must be considered as a kind of metaphor for struggle. And the poets (by which I mean all artists) are the only people who know the truth about us.\u201d I\u2019m interested in what that looks like in your journey as a poet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just need to know that something about my work can indeed hold a place in one human heart. It doesn\u2019t have to be that much space. Integrity isn\u2019t only about how you live. It\u2019s also about how you write and what you let out into the world. And how precise you are in your language. When I\u2019m writing my poems, I\u2019m trying to get them right before sending them out into the world. For one thing, I don\u2019t want to be embarrassed. I think it\u2019s important that I give the poem everything I could possibly give it and that it\u2019s as good as I can make it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ENGEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you know when it\u2019s at that point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, for one thing, I have good friends. The wonderful thing about the poetry community is that we\u2019re really good to one another. We like to sit in a room somewhere where it\u2019s a little cold and dark and uncomfortable. And we will read up on each other. For nothing, for feedback. It\u2019s a blessing to have people who will invest themselves and support your work. And it\u2019s a blessing to be able to do that for somebody else. And it\u2019s also a blessing to be comfortable about it. It\u2019s not going to be there automatically, but when it\u2019s there, it\u2019s a real lesson and I\u2019m really glad that it\u2019s there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HERRMANN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to know how you get these communities. How did you personally find your community?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

People are nice. And I try to be nice to people. And I try to tell the truth. People are like, \u201cOh, he\u2019s telling the truth. Let me go stand next to him. Let me go stand next to him because he\u2019s telling the truth. I don\u2019t want him to get shot.\u201d [Big laugh.] I also try to be sincerely grateful to people who\u2019ve done nice things for me. That helps to build community itself. People thank you in a real way. They remember you said thank you. You wouldn\u2019t believe how many people will not say thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I try to tell the truth, and I try to be good to people. I try to be there for people. If I see there\u2019s something that a younger writer needs and I can meet it, then I try to meet it. Sometimes that\u2019s as simple as reading a poem. And sometimes that becomes financial, or sometimes it becomes writing a recommendation, or sometimes it becomes talking to somebody who\u2019s in the same place in the same city to say, \u201cHey, can you let this person in your workshop?\u201d If you support the poetry you love as much as you can, that\u2019ll happen. And if you support the poets you love as much as you can, you\u2019re also creating a world where people will want to support you because they see you as a supporter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ANTHONY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview, you said if you\u2019re not writing you\u2019re teaching, but it sounds like maybe if you\u2019re not writing you\u2019re giving back to the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, teaching really helps because I feel like I\u2019m writing. When I\u2019m really helping a student with a poem or when I\u2019m really talking about something, I feel myself learning that thing or re-learning it or learning it in a new way. My students will see something I haven\u2019t seen, and it will give me something to chase. So I have this entire class or two classes of people who are giving me ideas and they don\u2019t know it. They\u2019re asking, \u201cCan I do this? Is this possible? Can you have a poem that does this?\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cLet me go figure it out!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HERRMANN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you ever struggle with students who were less interested in poetry in any level where you were still teaching it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I wasn\u2019t good at it when I started doing it. We\u2019re not supposed to be good at anything we do the first time. And we\u2019re hard on ourselves. Writers are hard on themselves about, like, not being Whitney Houston, but even Whitney Houston couldn\u2019t do what she started doing the first time she tried to do it. I look back, and I think about when I was an early teacher. I wasn\u2019t so great, and I feel bad. There are these people in the world who don\u2019t have everything that I have now, but the important thing is that you give them everything you do have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The younger my students are, the thing that I\u2019m noticing is, anything I ask them, they\u2019re like, \u201cI can just look it up. I don\u2019t have to know it.\u201d If that\u2019s the case, what happens with the knowledge that you gained from poetry? Because you can\u2019t look that shit up, you\u2019ve got to read it. And you have to internalize it. To really gain knowledge from poetry, you have to be a poetry reader. You have to know how to read poetry. I don\u2019t necessarily know how to combat that yet. That\u2019s another thing I\u2019m learning because I didn\u2019t have that experience at first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUECKERT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you think poets, no matter what, are teaching in some capacity a lot of the time? Even if it\u2019s casual?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, poets are always doing something. I actually have a mini essay I wrote about this. Poets are ambassadors in some way. They\u2019re always curating a reading series or writing a review or teaching a class or doing something to give. There is still in us this belief in introducing poetry to more people so they can know its glory because more people need it. I mean, if you\u2019re a writer, you don\u2019t love much else more than writing. A lot of that teaching has to do with creating a space where writing can be made, that the process itself can be made public and therefore you don\u2019t feel like a crazy person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HERRMANN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You said in an interview with Interlochen that there\u2019s something so recycled about it all\u2014just making literature for other people who make literature. It makes me wonder who you are writing for, if not other poets. It also made me think about not wanting to be nailed down. If you don\u2019t want to specifically be writing for queer poets or Black poets, who specifically are you writing for?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just write for me when I was nineteen. I had really big needs. And I was getting them fulfilled by poetry. I\u2019m trying to fill that need with the poems I write. And it was a future tense need even with this book [The Tradition<\/em>]. I feel like there are things that he needed to know that are here. But I\u2019m also trying to feel that need for myself, in the present tense. When I\u2019m reading poems, what do I want from poems that I\u2019m not seeing? And if I\u2019m not seeing it, then I\u2019m making it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HERMANN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You use beginning caps in the overwhelming majority of your poems. Since it\u2019s so unusual, I\u2019m just wondering what your particular reason for doing it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do it for two reasons. One is that there is a history of African-American poets doing it whose work I really love like Gwendolyn Brooks, like Cornelius Eady. It puts a kind of pressure on the line that makes the reader have to read each line one at a time and see it as a line. If you have to see each line as a line, then you have to deal with the poem on its terms as a poem of lines and as a crafted thing. You don\u2019t get to dismiss the poem because of what the poem is about. You see it coming to you formally in a way where you have to deal with it just as formally, no matter its subject matter, which I think has to do with why a lot of Black poets were doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ENGEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s working in an interesting way with what you were saying about rhyme. Rhyme has this song quality to it where you have to receive it, even if you don\u2019t like what it\u2019s saying. The caps make it so that you have to encounter each line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, and I want that to be visible. I want it in the ear, but I also want it visible on the page. I don\u2019t want you thinking you\u2019re encountering anything other than a poem. If you have prejudices about subject matter, I want you to understand that those are your prejudices and your problems. And that you should go solve them. If you want to tell me a poem can be about anything, it just needs to be well crafted, then I want you to understand if you want to pick me apart based on craft, we can go. \u201cYou don\u2019t know how to end a poem. You don\u2019t know how to use a metaphor. You don\u2019t know how to black black black black black black\u201d\u2014whatever you want to call your racism today. Something about the way poems are formed on the page, something about the line, something about the line break, something about all those things, any lack of that ability, becomes an opportunity for some people to dismiss your work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ENGEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tradition<\/em> feels like it\u2019s doing more explicit political things, particularly with Black Lives Matter, than previous books. Do you feel like you have to push into the craft even more when you\u2019re doing that because there\u2019s even more danger you might be dismissed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, I don\u2019t feel that. I feel like I have it, and so I\u2019m going to use it because I love it. I mean I actually love this shit. It seems like a silly thing for people who are not us\u2014it seems odd to discuss it as important\u2014but I think it\u2019s really important to know what caesura is and to know what a caesura can do in a line. I think that\u2019s where it is. I\u2019m excited about it. My poems are what people will call more directly political. But I\u2019m not really thinking about any of that when I\u2019m writing a poem. In the midst of writing a poem, I don\u2019t know where it\u2019s going to go, what it\u2019s going to be about, or how it\u2019s going to work out. I do know I have that in me, so that\u2019s a possibility. When you shoot an 18-year-old and then have his body laid out in the street for hours, I have emotions about that. And some of those emotions probably come from the fact that I\u2019m Black. And some of those emotions I would hope are there just because I\u2019m a person. As a person, I think it\u2019s not a good idea to shoot people and to have their bodies laying out in the street for hours. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s cool. And I would like to believe that people will agree with that, that people don\u2019t think that\u2019s okay. That\u2019s in me, somewhere walking around in my body, my psyche, who I am, so that might come out when I\u2019m writing a poem. But when I\u2019m writing a poem, I\u2019m actually thinking much more about, \u201cShould I make a leap here? Should I indent this line? Do I say the next thing, or do I make a metaphor first and then allow that metaphor to become the next thing after that?\u201d As I\u2019m asking those questions, I\u2019m saying things people keep telling me are intense. But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s intense. Look at the world right now! People are out here acting like my poems are controversial. Girl! Seriously! Like, seriously! People are like, \u201cOh your poems are so sexual,\u201d like what porn do you watch? My poems are so sexual? Me? What TV show are you watching?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thank God for Alice Walker every day. She wrote a book called The Third Life of Grange Copeland<\/em>, which was very important to me, particularly given my own childhood and my own past. I saw her giving a speech, and she said this thing about how she didn\u2019t understand why every image of two people having sex on television and in movies now looks like rape. Somebody has got to get pushed up against something every time, and we\u2019re programmed to believe that\u2019s what feels good. But my poems are too sexual? I tell my students, \u201cIf you are just being offended left and right, you\u2019re not going to have a good time in my class.\u201d But then, I also say to my students, \u201cAnd if you are offended by the fact of something in a poem that you love in a movie, we are not going to get along.\u201d People out here are mad that there is sex in poems. But you\u2019re trying to have sex!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll your poems are so violent.\u201d What? Do you watch the news? It is so ridiculous! You\u2019re out here pretending that we\u2019re not living in this world together. Why are you pretending that? How have you managed to isolate yourself, that you are not aware of the world, or you are trying to pretend the world does not exist? What kind of hatred is that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HERRMANN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have any advice for young poets?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it\u2019s important that you say yes to everything. Try not to say no. If there is something that you have an inkling to do, just go do it. If there is something you have an inkling to write, go write it. If there is something you have an inkling to see, go see it. Go make it happen. But I\u2019m also saying be careful. You might have an inkling to walk down a dark road in the middle of the night by yourself. Don\u2019t do that. But other than that, experience and see. Experience and see. Also, I think it\u2019s a good idea to live the life that you claim. Live the life of whatever identity you\u2019re claiming and if you are a poet just decide now what that looks like in terms of your time. For me, that looks like two hours a day. For you, it might look like fifteen minutes a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You keep the overhead low, that\u2019s what Grace Paley used to say. Instead of getting the room that\u2019s $127 a night, get the one that\u2019s $125 because you will need those two dollars. Create some discipline in your life when it comes to the writing. I don\u2019t think that has to be at the same time every day, although if it is at the same time every day, you know when it\u2019s going to happen. I don\u2019t think you should be going to sleep without practicing. You\u2019ve got to practice some. Practice a little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUECKERT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On an Instagram post, you say rebirth and renewal are kind of like an invitation. What is your perspective of those words, rebirth and renewal?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BROWN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just love spring. I was born on April 14th, and Diana Ross was born just a few days ago, and Billie Holiday is an Aries as well. I think it\u2019s the poet\u2019s season. I think Persephone, and I think Orpheus, those mythological people who had something to do with coming up from the underworld. There\u2019s something about that that I think has a lot to do with writing. Making something out of nothing. Creating something, recreating something. There are these memories we have and we put them down or these facts we know and we put them down, and that becomes a whole other thing, other than the memory or the fact. That\u2019s sort of my relationship to writing and to the way I think about . . . I love the fact that I can see, smell, feel spring happening all around. It\u2019s a busy time because of AWP, my taxes are due, the semester\u2019s ending. I have a birthday coming up and everybody wants to know, \u201cWhat are you going to do for your birthday?\u201d Take a nap. A very long nap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TERSE AND BOTH RHETORICAL AND LYRICAL, Jericho Brown’s poems explore race and sexuality with an unflinching gaze. Sometimes formal and always smart, the poems are infused with a sense of grace. Subjects that feel at first deeply personal become part of the experiences of a greater we. At the core of Brown\u2019s poems is a call … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9086,"featured_media":92,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35935"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35935"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36809,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35935\/revisions\/36809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}