Jericho Brown

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Jericho Brown grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, and worked as a speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans before earning his PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston. He also holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of New Orleans and graduated with a BA from Dillard University in 1998. Brown is the author of The Tradition (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry; The New Testament (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), which received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; and Please (New Issues, 2008), which received the 2009 American Book Award. Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award and has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. He has taught at the University of Houston, San Diego State University, and the University of San Diego, as well as at numerous conferences and workshops. Brown is currently an associate professor of English and creative writing and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and poetry editor at The Believer. Source

Duplex ["I begin with love"]

I begin with love, hoping to end there.

I don’t want to leave a messy corpse.

 

              I don’t want to leave a messy corpse

              Full of medicines that turn in the sun.

 

Some of my medicines turn in the sun.

Some of us don’t need hell to be good.

 

              Those who need most, need hell to be good.

              What are the symptoms of your sickness?

 

Here is one symptom of my sickness:

Men who love me are men who miss me.

 

              Men who leave me are men who miss me

              In the dream where I am an island.

 

In the dream where I am an island,

I grow green with hope. I’d like to end there.

Published:

2019

Length:

Shorty

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2021

2023

Themes:

Faith & Hope

LGBTQ+ Experience

Poetic Form

Literary Devices:

Anaphora

a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences

Duplex

The poem starts with a couplet of two distinct lines. The second line is repeated and a new line is added, and then repeated until there are seven couplets of nine to eleven syllables each. This form was invented by Jericho Brown.

Repetition

a recurrence of the same word or phrase two or more times