Jericho Brown
“Work”, suggests the artist’s Black interior—the interior of a man who, due to his complexion, was often mistaken for “white.”
Jericho Brown has been described as a poet of eros. He is recognized for his daring uses of formal poetics. His original poetic form, “The Duplex” is a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues.
Brown’s latest collection, The Tradition, is a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award. His first book, Please, won the American Book award. His second title, The New Testament, was named one of the best poetry books of the year by Library Journal and received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the National Endowment for the Arts and The Guggenheim Foundation.
Brown is an associate professor and director of the Creative Writing program at Emory University in Atlanta Georgia.
Brown has received the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his book The Tradition.
Jericho Brown reading his poems at the High Museum's Bearden exhibition on January 3, 2020 at The Art Section live event.
Work
--Romare Bearden
From the fields of the South
To the mills in the North
The men come in every color of black
And the women too
Some on their feet ready to hoe
Some flat on their backs
One lying facedown
With the train we can trust
In earshot but too far to catch
Very few of us seated
Each so different
You can’t tell us apart
The way the skin on my hands
Is not the skin on my face
My face won’t get a callus
My hands never had a whitehead
But it’s all my body
My body of work is proof
Of color everywhere
I mean
I can show you
Just how black everything is
If you let me
If you pay me
If you give me time
To cut
The way a life can be cut into
It’s roosters and whistles and sundowns
And other signals to get up
And go to work
Or to rest a little
My family made a little money
And I was so light
A few of the women called me
Shine
I had an eye
For where I wasn’t like the people
I pulled and pasted together
Where wasn’t I like the people I pasted
Back when Jim Crow touched the black side
Of all the light in the world
And don’t Jim Crow touch
The black side of all the light in the world
I’m telling you
First time I came to Atlanta
I couldn’t walk through one door
Of the High Museum
Wasn’t allowed
But baby I’m old
Enough to know
What New Negro means
Let a Negro show you
Let me do my thing
I want to go to work
I want to make me
Out of us
Turn on the sun
Get me some scissors
