When Jericho Brown writes in his latest collection, “My body is a temple in disrepair,” he is speaking not only about his corporeal form but also about society’s treatment of his existence as a queer black man. In the collection, a finalist for the National Book Award, Brown engages with several kinds of tradition, including those of form and mythmaking, and interrogates the damaging and dismissive responses often offered to black men who are survivors of violence. Meanwhile, Brown synthesizes old traditions into a new one on the page, inventing a poetic structure he calls “the duplex,” which combines sonnets, ghazals and the blues.
Buy now: The Tradition