Books › The Tradition
The Tradition
110 pages
A daring, formally inventive exploration of trauma, identity, and survival that cuts to the core of the human experience.
What it feels like
This daring poetry collection reads with a steady, relentless rhythm, pulling the reader into an intimate and mythical exploration of the human condition. The atmosphere is both harrowing and celebratory, balancing the heavy weight of trauma, legacy, and the normalization of evil with a profound quest for survival. The verse is masterful and formally inventive, introducing a unique blend of the sonnet, ghazal, and blues that delivers stunning clarity. It feels deeply personal yet broadly resonant, asking urgent questions about safety, freedom, and nationhood. Readers who appreciate cutting, necessary poetry that navigates the intersections of blackness, queerness, and fatherhood will find themselves completely absorbed by this celebration of contradiction and resilience.
- Mood
- mythical
- urgent
- reflective
- harrowing
- Tone
- daring
- intimate
- cutting
- relentless
- celebratory
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- the normalization of evil · fatherhood and legacy · blackness and queerness · trauma and survival · safety and freedom
- The writing
- Masterful and formally inventive verse that blends the sonnet, ghazal, and blues into stunningly clear, cutting lines.
- The arc
- Moves from the intimate terrors of personal and historical trauma toward a relentless, celebratory quest for survival.
- Who it's for
- Readers seeking daring, formally inventive poetry that intimately explores identity, trauma, and the complex nature of American freedom.
Content notes
- trauma
- discussions of evil and terror
About the book
"Jericho Brown's daring new book The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown's poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Brown makes mythical pastorals to question the terrors to which we've become accustomed, and to celebrate how we survive. Poems of fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness, worship, and trauma are propelled into stunning clarity by Brown's mastery, and his invention of the duplex--a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues--testament to his formal skill. The Tradition is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while reveling in a celebration of contradiction"--Goodreads.com.
Description from Open Library.
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