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Now in Paperback: Jericho Brown
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“A poet is a special kind of nerd.” —Jericho Brown
This episode originally ran as Ep. 148
Jericho Brown is the Pulitzer Prize—winning poet behind The Tradition.
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Sponsor: Liquid IV, promo code cnf
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Transcript
Sponsorship and Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
ACNFers, this episode is affiliately sponsored by Liquid IV, and I gotta say, pretty delicious stuff, good way to rehydrate and fuel those endurance activities, or if you just want to zhuzh up your water. Tasty stuff, been a big fan of the lemon lime, non-GMO and free of gluten, dairy, and soy, so you know your burly vegan digs it. Also, there's a sugar-free version that I really dig, and the white peach, chef's kiss.
00:00:28
Speaker
Get 20% off when you go to liquidiv.com and use a promo code CNF at checkout. That's 20% off anything you order when you shop better hydration using promo code CNF at liquidiv.com.
00:00:44
Speaker
Today's episode is also sponsored by Badnaj, a noun for light, playful banter, or railery. When the 3am voice wakes you up, it thinks it's engaging in Badnaj. But what really is happening is making you doubt every decision you've ever made.
Community and Support
00:01:09
Speaker
Oh hey CN efforts it's CNF Pod the creative non-fiction podcast where I speak to badass people about telling true stories I'm Brendan O'Mear. Another now in paperback edition this is the uber poet Jericho Brown originally episode 148. Now although I stand corrected the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown he won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for the tradition which came out around the time this
00:01:38
Speaker
aired and then later that year. Lo and behold he won one of the most prestigious awards of Ryder. Can win.
00:01:49
Speaker
I think I said in the original intro to this episode that this particular interview is like an hour-long pull quote. It's so good. And I'm real happy to bring it back to the top of the feed. If you head over to brenthedomare.com, hey, you can read show notes and sign up for my rage against the algorithm newsletter.
Travel and Fitness Routines
00:02:10
Speaker
A curated list. I know, everyone does lists. But an essay by your resident crank. Four book recommendations. Stuff to make you happy. It goes up to 11, man. Like literally, the list is 11 items long. First in the month, no spam. So far as I can tell, you can't beat it. Also, consider heading to patreon.com slash cnfpod. And no, it's not just a money grab. Sure, I'm asking for some dough.
00:02:38
Speaker
But what you get is more than just the satisfaction of helping this podcast stay afloat. You get access to a community of other CNF and writers. I start a thread and then you talk amongst yourselves. Don't lurk. Jump in and contribute to the conversation. Maybe exchange contact info. Make a friend.
00:02:57
Speaker
If the podcast itself is kind of about collecting dots, and I'm borrowing a Seth Godinism, the Patreon community is about connecting dots. Free ways to support the show are leaving reviews on Apple Podcasts or ratings on Spotify. And if you leave a new one, I will read it right here to give you a shout out and give you credit.
00:03:15
Speaker
Okay, so as this is a paperback edition, no parting shot at the end of the show, so please enjoy as I get back to work on the book that I will likely not finish, and as is my usual send-off, I will just say, stay wild, CNFers, and if you can't do Interview, now go enjoy this interview with Jericho Brown, now in paperback.
00:03:52
Speaker
When you're traveling so much and everything, how are you kind of keeping sane and trying to keep your energy levels up enough so you're performing well for the people who come out to see you? This is a really great question. I'm really just working on adrenaline, man. I had a sort of system where I was eating right and working out, and then AWP came.
00:04:17
Speaker
And after that, it's really been hard to keep up with the planes. And the real thing is that I was living in Wichita for a month. And all of the flights from there had to include connections. So I was getting on airplanes at like six in the morning and then connecting. And then so I think that that part of it's over because now I'll be you know, I'll be based back in Atlanta again and
00:04:42
Speaker
It'll be easier to just catch afternoon flights, which will mean more sleep. And more sleep and less time in the airports mean I can work out and I can eat better. So it's just the airports that are the trouble. The people are not the trouble. Once I'm on a campus or at a bookstore or some community center where I'm giving a reading,
00:05:04
Speaker
Then it then things get a lot easier for me because i'm interacting with folks who Ultimately are here for the spirit of poetry And i'm always trying to do what I can to participate in that spirit So i'm really glad to be on the tour for that because people are so good and Generally everywhere I go folk feed me and they take me to the best restaurants in their city And that's always nice
Writing Discipline and Process
00:05:30
Speaker
to experience. Oh, that's cool
00:05:33
Speaker
My friend Elena Pasarello, who's been on the show before, when she found out I'd be interviewing you a few weeks ago, she was like, oh, I can't wait to hear about his burpee routine. That's so hilarious. You know, I do probably four out of seven days. I'll do 100 burpees during my best weeks. It hadn't been that way lately.
00:05:58
Speaker
But I'll do 100 burpees a day. Sometimes more than that. I like to get to seven out of seven quite honestly. But yes, usually it's four or five days, I can get 100 burpees in and then when I'm, when I'm doing that enough weeks in a row, then I start feeling like I'm really in shape.
00:06:16
Speaker
You know, it's getting warmer, so I got to get in shape so I can have an excuse not to wear too many clothes.
00:06:34
Speaker
also laid that that is really it's real important whether it's walks or like resistance training like weight training is kind of like my go-to how important is it for for you to really you know get the blood pumping and get in and beef up too okay you know to to fill out a shirt and as you say when you get in shape to have the excuse of wearing fewer clothing
00:06:56
Speaker
Well, you know, the truth is I think everybody needs a hobby and every poet in particular should have something that he or she is doing that does not necessarily include
00:07:09
Speaker
um, poetry itself. Like, I think it's a good idea to have something that asks you not to think of poetry at all, so that when you go back to your work, when you go back to your reading, when you go back to your writing, you're coming to it fresh. And the reason I lived and the reason why I do certain kinds of metabolic work and cardio is really because it gets so hard that it's all you can think to do, you know, when you're under a lot of weight.
00:07:37
Speaker
You have to pick that weight up and you can't be out here thinking about metaphors and line breaks. You need to concentrate on picking that weight up. Do you know what I'm saying? The same thing for burpees. I mean, when I'm jumping up and down in the air, then I'm sort of having that one second of relief and all I can do is feel that relief. And so then when I go back to work,
00:07:56
Speaker
When I go back to look at my poems, I'm sort of coming to it clear-headed and I can see things that I would not have seen before because during that moment that I'm lifting or I'm doing burpees or I'm doing whatever else I'm doing, then I have escaped poetry in a way and I have put myself in a position where I've completely cleared my head and I can come back and I'm not obsessing over a line anymore. I can see the line anew and I can work on that line of poetry.
00:08:26
Speaker
When do you typically work out over the course of a day? It really depends, man, on what the day is like. But on the ideal day, what happens for me is one of two things. I either wake up and do 100 burpees, then eat, then write for two hours. And people are like, oh, two hours. And the truth is, it's really just two hours because it's about two hours later that I'm hungry again. So I have to stop.
00:08:56
Speaker
and eat again. Or I just wake up and I eat. And then I write for two hours. So there's eating and then there's writing. And then, um, you know, then I'll go work out right after them. You know, I'll eat that second time and then I'll go try to do something active with myself, keep myself going and alive.
00:09:15
Speaker
I love the commitment to daily rituals and daily practices, so I love hearing that those mornings they sound, even though they might be a little bit, they are a little fluid. They do seem to adhere to a certain kind of structure, and how important is that for you to hinge your day on that kind of structure so you can sort of feel good about what you're doing?
00:09:41
Speaker
Well, I'm a creature of habit and I need it. And really when it comes down to the work I need, I need to know that I've been disciplined. And, you know, poetry is a practice and it's like
Spiritual Practices
00:09:52
Speaker
anything else that you want to get good at. You really have to be disciplined and you have to practice. You have to know that you're going to get a certain amount of reading done and a certain amount of writing done.
00:10:02
Speaker
And that's not to say that you're going to have a certain number of pages of poetry written. That is to say that you're going to get the exercise in. You're going to get writing done. Now that writing might not end up being a poem.
00:10:20
Speaker
that writing might not end up being anything you ever get to use that you publish, but it's writing that you do because it gets you to the next day of writing, because you enjoy the journey that writing provides, not because you're out here trying to win an award or get a poem in The New Yorker, which is always nice. I love winning awards, and I like it when my... I do like it when my poems are in The New Yorker. You know, I do like those things, but that's not why I'm here.
00:10:49
Speaker
You know, that's not why I was born. You know, Emily Dickinson never won an award. You know what I mean? When I think, you know, I think a lot about Phyllis Wheatley's poems, but I also think about the life of Phyllis Wheatley. What does it mean to be a slave in this country who is also writing poetry? And one of the things that I think about often is the fact that when she was writing, she was writing because she was a poet. She was writing because she wanted to.
00:11:19
Speaker
there is nothing that she could have possibly gained from it. Do you understand what I'm saying? I think maybe our capitalist culture makes everything so material that it's hard for us to think about doing anything for the sheer joy of doing it because it is there and must be done as opposed to doing something for some materialistic gain, which is really the goal of my work and really what I'm trying to do
Embracing Failure in Creativity
00:11:46
Speaker
on a daily basis when I'm making poems. So, you know, I wake up in the morning and I know that at least two hours and sometimes more is going to be dedicated to writing and it depends on where I am.
00:11:58
Speaker
With a book, the closer I am to a book, then it gets way more hours than that. This book in particular, the tradition tried to kill me. She wanted my whole day, man. I'm serious. I was teaching, I was running a job search, I was doing some service obligations for my fraternity and for my church. It was a very busy time.
00:12:22
Speaker
But I was still getting a lot of writing done because these poems seem to be calling out to me and asking for me. So I had some very late nights and some very early mornings dealing with this book. I would write sometimes till four or five in the morning.
00:12:37
Speaker
and get up for an 8 or 9 o'clock meeting. So I was really pushing it. It was exhausting, but it was exhilarating. So that's why when I hold the book now in my hands and I see this beautiful cover and the wonderful design and even just looking at the font, I'm sort of amazed by this physical manifestation.
00:12:53
Speaker
of trial, of struggle, of trouble. It's the physical manifestation. It's the baby born of those months that I was really pushing and really writing. So I'm always happy that she's in the world and that other folks can get to her. If you want to see evidence of my soul on earth, you read my poems. You know what I mean? The best representation of my soul on this planet is my poems.
00:13:19
Speaker
And you reference the struggle too as putting this book out into the world and getting through it and maybe surrendering to that struggle. And how much do you embrace that over the course of an artistic venture so you put out the best work you know you're capable of? Well, it's really a matter of
00:13:44
Speaker
As I said, being faithful to the journey and not really being concerned about the outcome or the destination. I don't have destinations in mind. I always have experiences in mind. And so what I'm trying to have when I'm writing is a writing experience. I'm trying to feel, I'm trying to discover, I'm trying to search out things. I feel like I'm investigating when I'm writing. So when I make a book,
00:14:10
Speaker
it gets made because I have enough poems to make it. And because thematically enough poems are speaking to one another to make a book. I don't make books based on some sort of a timeline. You know, my grandfather, both of my grandfathers, my great grandfather, and my grandfather, my mother's father, they were sharecroppers. So I don't, I don't
00:14:35
Speaker
make promises, I don't allow editors or publishers to make me promises that I know they can't keep.
Path to Poetry
00:14:44
Speaker
You know what I mean? Like, the deal that I made with myself wasn't a deal about advances or about deadlines. It was a deal to be a poet. That's the agreement that Jericho Brown made with himself. So when I'm writing, I'm not really writing toward publication or toward a book.
00:15:05
Speaker
But a book happens over time because I'm sort of being reflective on what I've been doing the last few years. But not because I feel like it's so important that Jericho Brown have a book as if I'm out here with the biggest and best voice. It's because it's time to have a book because a book has called out to me.
00:15:24
Speaker
And I like to think of the work I do in that way. I mean, for me, it's spiritual. And the discipline I have with it is religious. So, you know, writing is, for me, a religious experience. Reading is a religious experience. These are things I do because they really ask for something internal, something reflective, something meditative.
00:15:47
Speaker
You know reading a book really takes your entire mind and you have to check out of the world and lose yourself in whatever Narrative you've been given by that particular writer. And so I'm here trying to make those narratives for the people of the world You know what I'm saying? Yeah
00:16:02
Speaker
Yeah, your work is so lean but deeply immersive, too, in terms of its experience and how evocative it is. And you've said a spoken thing is an artful thing, and I like to think of your poems like that, too. I feel you reading to me as I'm reading the poem, if that makes any sense.
00:16:25
Speaker
Oh, that makes me so happy. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, yeah. And it lends itself to a much more immerse, like a very immersive experience. Like you are, we are being like taken on this wonderful journey by someone who is supremely dedicated to a craft. And, you know, with that said, like, when did you know as a young person that you might have had a knack for poetry or at least a talent for it?
00:16:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know, when I was a kid, I fell in love with poems because my mom, she's an improvisational genius. And because she understood that childcare was really expensive, she figured out that she could she could take or in many cases, send me and my sister to the library. So we grew up going to the library. There was a library on the walk from school on the way home and we would go there instead of going home because my mother would still be at work.
00:17:21
Speaker
or when she had to run certain errands where we couldn't be with her, she would take us to the library. And we spent a lot of time in the Morningside branch of the Shreveport Public Library. I'll never forget this. And because I was so young, I was really taken by poems because they were short. And I felt, although poems are difficult, they ask a lot of you, but my feeling was that they were easy because they only took up so much of the page.
00:17:48
Speaker
And I liked the fact that I could be done with a poem and I would still be in the middle of the page. I really felt like I was getting away with something. So I started reading poems when I was, I mean, in that way, you know, the librarians noticed that poems would keep me still. They would give me books of poetry because they were like, oh, he'll read the whole book, you know.
00:18:09
Speaker
And they were just giving me, thank God the librarians, you know, the librarians were the best babysitters I ever had. They're some of the godliest people walking the face of this earth. Librarians are the best people we have. And I'm glad that those particular librarians didn't know that much about poetry. So they were just giving me the books by the poets that they had heard of, because they imagined
00:18:32
Speaker
Well, if I've heard of the poet, then that's who he should be reading. So they were giving, you know, I was 10 years old and I was reading Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell. You know, it's not a good idea to give a depressed 10 year old Anne Sexton. I mean, she literally has poems with titles like
00:18:49
Speaker
wanting to die. But you know, so because they knew the confessional poets, I was reading confessional poetry when I was eight and nine and 10 and 11 years old. And I didn't really understand a lot of the work, but I was trying to imitate it in poems that my mother would then put on the refrigerator. So and I think that was the beginning for me, right? Like seeing the poem on the refrigerator.
00:19:17
Speaker
and in many ways placated. You know, like, she couldn't be bothered with all of the trouble I was getting into when she would see me bring her this piece of paper with words on it. She had to have the mom reaction to that. She's like,
00:19:32
Speaker
wrote a poem, you know? And I think I still feel that sometimes, you know, maybe unto myself, though my mother's not here saying it to me. Maybe I'm saying to myself when I finish a poem, oh, I wrote a poem, you know?
00:19:46
Speaker
And I try to celebrate that as often as I can. As you were reading these poets as a young man and then experimenting on your own, who in your circle was giving you permission to keep going, to keep experimenting with it so you could push your limits and the limits of your talent and your ambition too?
00:20:14
Speaker
Well, you know, I've had a lot of encouragement over the years. I've had really great teachers. In undergraduate school, one of my teachers was a woman named a really great poet. Her name is Mona Lisa Soloy. I went to Dillard University. It's an HBCU, small private school in New Orleans, Louisiana. And when I was there, I remember bringing her a poem, and she was looking at it, and she was trying to help me revise it. And she said, well,
00:20:38
Speaker
I know there's a poem in here somewhere and it wasn't very good and she was trying to be as positive as she could, but I also remember her saying, you have all this language, what are you going to do with it? You got all this drive to write. What are you going to do? I was a senior at that point and I had just really been chasing poetry around my entire undergraduate education and she saw that in me.
Community and Creativity
00:21:06
Speaker
And I said, I don't know. You know, I felt, you know, because I didn't even know what you would do. I didn't know how you would, how one becomes a poet or lives the life as a poet. And Mona Lisa Soloy said to me, I know what you're going to do. You're going to be a poet. That's what you're going to do.
00:21:29
Speaker
And I remember thinking, oh, it's that simple. Like, oh, I just have to decide. I mean, that's a conversation I always think of as as as inspiring and seminal and as at the beginning of of me understanding that much of what I would have to do, I would simply have to decide to do it.
00:21:47
Speaker
I saw this guy with a t-shirt on in the gym the other day and it said, I've got to get it. It said because I said I would. And I feel like I got so excited because I feel like that's really been the basis of the last 20 years of my life, me doing things because just, you know, I said I would, you know, and having faith and believing in myself and keeping my word to myself.
00:22:11
Speaker
that what I set out to do, I was going to finish, I was going to do it. So yeah, that's the kind of thing that I think of as
00:22:19
Speaker
And that's the kind of thing that was encouraging to me, Terrence Hayes, Kalama Yassalaam, the No More Literary Society, my teachers in my MFA program, like John Gary and Kate Murphy, my teachers at the University of Houston, where I got a PhD, Claudia Rankin, Nick Flynn, even Tony Hoagland. I had really Mark Doty, who's really wonderful, the Cavet Canum poets who have been so good to me.
00:22:47
Speaker
And then, you know, I just I'm a part of a great generation of poets. I have to say I'm really proud of us. You know, when I think about what I'm trying to do, I have also trying to do that same thing. The people I took when I was in workshops, I was in creative writing workshops.
00:23:09
Speaker
Tyen Bajest and Greg Pardlow and Vyvi Francis and Francine J Harris and on and on and on and Don Lundy Martin and Douglas Kearney. So I feel like my peers helped to inspire me because they are not out here playing with these words. They are going to write these poems and I might want to keep up. I don't think of what I'm doing by myself. I feel like what I'm doing, I'm doing it
00:23:36
Speaker
what I'm doing, I'm doing on a team and it's a team of people who are literally not just participating in or answering to but creating culture. The culture we live in is being partially created by the poems that are in print today.
00:23:53
Speaker
And given that you had such a vibrant ecosystem of writers and talented writers and poets, did you ever have any sort of crises of confidence in your own ability to keep pace, or were you able to stay on, kind of run your own race?
00:24:12
Speaker
Well, I'm always running my own race. One of the things that I learned a long time ago is you can be inspired by people and you can encourage people. You can have role models and you can work to help others, but you can't be in a position where you are. It is of no use to you.
00:24:34
Speaker
to ever be out here trying to compare yourself to other people. Because part of what you're gonna do, part of what I'm trying to do and what I think my poems have done in this world that I've seen evidence of, you know, when you compare yourself to other people, you put yourself in a position where you're competing with them.
Poetry's Societal Role
00:24:52
Speaker
You can't compete with other people because we each have a gift to give. And my gift is not going to be like anybody else's gift.
00:25:01
Speaker
Do you know what I mean? To try and compare them would be to mixed metaphors. Your poems, my poems, anyone's poems, create.
00:25:11
Speaker
Poems create an audience. People realize they need those poems because they're in the world. They didn't know they needed them before you made them. Do you know what I'm saying? So, you know, my work has to be Jericho Brown's work. My work cannot be work that is compared to anybody else's because the work I make finds its readers because it is designed for them just as other poets' work is designed for those poets' readers.
00:25:41
Speaker
And it's designed for them because when I'm writing, I'm thinking about what I can do best. I'm not thinking about trying to write better than somebody else. I'm trying to be the best Jericho Brown I can be.
00:25:55
Speaker
But that said, you know, obviously there are days where you feel discouraged, you feel disappointed. You have days that are particularly bad writing days or days where you don't really understand what's going to come next. But, you know, those are days like anybody would have any time. And that's why friendship is so important. That's why poetry written before my time is so important because that helps to bring me back. That helps to inspire me.
00:26:22
Speaker
And I have some good people that I work with. When I'm writing, when I'm coming close to the end of a book, I'll send the book to very close friends and they'll read it and they'll tell me I'm on the marker. They'll tell me I'm totally losing my mind and writing bad poems. And I'm glad to have people who are that honest. This is, in many ways, this is very isolating, a job to have. It's you in a room.
00:26:50
Speaker
with some books and some paper, you know what I mean? But in other ways, it's made of the greatest community. I think the poets are the best community on this earth. I really do. I believe in the poets. And I believe in the poets in this nation today more than I've ever believed in anything. I really do.
00:27:12
Speaker
Why do you think that is that poets in particular have such a bond and a want to be sort of together? Well, you know, a poet is a special kind of a nerd.
00:27:30
Speaker
Because part of the reason why, you know, when you are a gamer, the community built around gaming does come with it a certain amount of capital. You've got to be able to afford the games. Do you know what I mean? The same thing, like if you're a comic book nerd, you've got to be able to afford the comic books. They are not cheap, by the way. Do you understand what I'm saying? So in all of those, you know, all of the nerds you can be come with
00:28:00
Speaker
its own community, but I think the poetry community is the least expensive. And so therefore, we're sort of crossing class and racial and gender boundaries in ways that other groups cannot, other artists, other nerds, cannot cross those boundaries in the same way. We know various levels of different things, but we have one thing in common. You know, there are poets
00:28:29
Speaker
who are also dancers, poets who are also computer technicians, poets who are also beauticians. Do you understand what I'm saying? And so when you meet another poet, you know, we have some language in common. You know, we have Shakespeare in common. We sort of know some things together. And we identify with one another because
00:28:55
Speaker
When you're a poet, you are indeed always writing and living against the current. And if you're living against the current, when you meet other folk who are as counterculture as you are, as you must be,
00:29:10
Speaker
then you get excited because you don't feel so alone in the world. And so I think that's why the poets, more than anyone else, love to get together and get excited when they see one another. And they're social in ways that other people are not social together. You know, and I mean that when I say that, I think in order to write a poem, you're always making discoveries.
00:29:30
Speaker
And those discoveries mean that you end up, to make a discovery means you find something out you did not know before. And if you're gonna find out something you really did not know before, then you're gonna say something in a poem that may well challenge what you thought you believed. You're gonna say something in a poem that may well challenge your own system of values, may well challenge your own system of morals and ethics, right? If you say that thing, then you have to live by something new.
00:29:57
Speaker
You have to consider whether or not you believe something other than what you've been telling yourself you believe.
00:30:02
Speaker
That's the kind of work poets do. So if you're doing that on an individual basis, then imagine what happens to readers of your poetry who are also experiencing these sort of changes of life where they're figuring out what they really believe. And that's why poetry is always counterculture, because, you know, we're told to believe certain things in our capitalist nation. We're told to follow certain laws, certain strictures, certain guidelines, certain mores. And the poets are always asking why.
00:30:32
Speaker
The poets are always saying, why is that okay? The poets are saying, who told you that? Who told you that was the way things have to be? The poets are always questioning what history is and where it comes from. And the poets are also always trying to design truth. They're trying to make sure that truth is emanating from their work. And truth actually may not have anything to do with facts. Truth is often an emotional thing.
00:31:00
Speaker
And because we're creating emotional truth in our work, we make a lot of people mad. You know, people don't like poets. You tell people, one of the ways that I can get people on an airplane to stop talking to me, if they're sitting next to me when they ask me what I do for a living, I very quickly tell them I'm a poet. And then they get very disgruntled.
00:31:21
Speaker
They have no idea what to say. And so they absolutely say nothing to me for the rest of the entire plane ride. And that's a really beautiful feeling to know that I have this identity that is an outcast identity.
00:31:38
Speaker
And therefore, I have to service that identity. Am I doing the work that I need to do to be outcast enough where I am asking the questions of this social culture, of this country, that a poet would be asking? And, you know, let me be clear about this. I think those questions come from our subconscious minds. You know, poets
00:31:59
Speaker
are not necessarily thinking about the political all the time. What we're thinking about is language. What we're thinking about is line and line break. What we're thinking about is leaps and juxtaposition. And yet, when we're thinking about those things, if we are properly attending to them, then what comes from them
00:32:18
Speaker
is the political. What comes from them is the social. So that's the kind of thing that I'm interested in. And so when I meet other folks that are interested in that, you know, it takes a lot to be desiring of the outcast identity. So when you meet other people who are like that, it takes a lot to be vulnerable, man. It's not easy.
00:32:43
Speaker
Do you understand what I'm saying? When you meet someone who is seeking vulnerability in themselves and you know you've been seeking vulnerability in yourself, then of course you want to be friends with that person, because they're just as crazy as you are. I mean, we're literally living in a country where people are admitting being attracted. It's not just, people think that like the mark of this era is that there are so many lies and so many, so much false news, so many falsehoods,
00:33:12
Speaker
So much fake this and fake that. So many questions about what's real. What I'm really fascinated by is how much people are attracted and openly attracted to these lies. How people want to live lies. And poets are not going to be out here trying to live no lies, man. They're going to tell you the truth. You have to deal with it.
00:33:34
Speaker
It sounds like just in listening to you and doing a lot of the reading, I did just ahead of our interview, just reading interviews you've done and feature articles.
00:33:51
Speaker
So much of what you say is so heavily grounded in deep thought. I wonder how you carve out time in your busy schedule and busy days when we're getting bombarded with so much stuff to be able to sit there and synthesize what's going on and to sit there in deep thought and process things. How do you build that into your day?
00:34:15
Speaker
Well, I spend something I did not mention before I write. I spend some time, quite honestly, you know, people don't like it when you start talking about this, but it's true. So you ask me, so I have to tell the truth. You know, before I started writing, I spent some time praying.
00:34:31
Speaker
And I spend some time reading something other than poetry that is usually some text, either by somebody like Michael Bernard Beckwith or maybe Ernest Holmes, maybe the Bible itself, maybe the Quran. And if I spend time with those kinds of things, then it gives me a new way of seeing the world that isn't necessarily
00:34:56
Speaker
isn't necessarily political and isn't necessarily even theoretical. You might call it philosophical. It might be philosophy, but in a way it's not philosophy or religion either. It's really the kind of thing that I'm reading because I want to see toward my own spirit, toward the spirit. And doing that kind of work, I think,
00:35:20
Speaker
having a time for prayer and meditation in my life and knowing that I'm going to spend some time doing that every day and finding some way to make that happen. I know I'm not going to go to bed without that happening. If I do that, if I make a practice of that, then I can see the world in a way where I can ask the right questions of the world. I see it for what it really is.
00:35:45
Speaker
And your reference in your two-hour writing block time, give or take, there's often a lot of hard work is going into that to be able to wring out all you can out of a line or out of a word. And it carries a lot of weight. It's a heavy ball, as we might say, in baseball.
00:36:09
Speaker
And so for you, sometimes in this line of work, it can be kind of hard to define what it means to have rigor and tenacity in this line of work. So I wonder how you define what it means to take 500 swings in the batting cage or the 100 burpees. What is the equivalent of that in your poetry, so in your writing, so you know that you've gotten a lot of work done and good work done?
00:36:37
Speaker
Well, there is no equivalent because you're not going to get a lot of good work done. You sort of just plan to fail, man. I mean, you know what I'm teaching? I've been a college professor for a long time.
00:36:52
Speaker
What I feel like I'm teaching isn't necessarily just writing. I mean, what I'm teaching is I'm teaching my students how to fail and how to be good at failing and how to enjoy failing, right? Because everything anybody's ever done well, they do well because they failed at it first. So I don't imagine, you know, I write
00:37:13
Speaker
I write something every day and I just let it go. I leave it alone. I don't have any expectation that it's going to be good or that it's going to be used. The lines, let me tell you something. The lines, there are lines in this book that are as old as 2005, but I just keep everything. I don't throw any, the duplexes, the form I created, there are a series of poems in this book called The Duplex,
00:37:41
Speaker
which is a sonnet and a hustle and the blues mixed into one single form that I invented. Those poems, many of the lines of those poems
00:37:53
Speaker
were from scraps that I hadn't figured out what to do with going back as far as 2004 and 2005, just after 2006, just after Hurricane Katrina. The reason I know the year is because I lost a computer. Somebody stole my computer around then. I'm still mad about it.
00:38:15
Speaker
You know, everything that I've had on the computer since then, I've kept on the computer and I go back to it and I push it around and I try to see if I can make it work, given the fact that I know more now than I did then. So can I call those failures? I mean, up until April 2nd – you know, my book is like 13 days old at this point – up until April 2nd, all of those lines were failures. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah. Well, they just – they needed time to incubate.
00:38:43
Speaker
Exactly. And so you don't know, we don't know how long it's going to take. You know, we don't, we just know we have to do the work that we're set here to do.
Creation of the Duplex Form
00:38:52
Speaker
You know, we have to follow what's been asked of us. And one of the things that inspires me is to think about everyone that I've ever thought of as, I guess we would call them an idol. You know, the people in this world who inspire you, let's say you think about somebody like, I don't know, like Beyonce, like LeBron James.
00:39:13
Speaker
like Serena Williams, like Venus Williams. Do you understand what I'm saying? When you think about these people, what are their lives really like? I mean, the people that you most admire in this world, what are their lives really like? What do they do in the morning? I know what Beyonce does in the morning. She gets up in the morning, she gets in the shower, and she does scales. That's what she does. She does do re miso fa latido.
00:39:41
Speaker
And I've never slept next to Beyonce. I've never, I've never awakened next to her, but I know that's what she's doing. Cause if you're going to hold notes while you turn it flips, you, you must have been doing, you must have been practicing every day. Like I know that I can sit around and have a good barbershop conversation about basketball, but I don't want to talk to LeBron James about basketball. He knows who won the NBA championship in pick a year. Cause he knows everything there is to know. He knows every play.
00:40:09
Speaker
studied the stuff. So whatever, you know, if you have somebody in this world, ask Barack Obama a question about constitutional law. Do you understand what I'm saying? If you have somebody you admire in this world, don't just think about you admire the way they do something. Think about what their life is like when they are not in front of you.
00:40:35
Speaker
If you think about that, then that should be inspiration enough for you to know what your life needs to be like when you're not in front of people. What are you doing that's like scales? How much are you YouTubeing old basketball? And what does that look like in the land of poetry, right? What is my reading and my writing like? What is the consistency of my reading and writing that's going to become what people are calling the tradition?
00:41:02
Speaker
I love what you said, too, about telling your students to get good at failing. And something I always love to talk to everyone I have on the show about is how they get comfortable writing enough bad work to get to good work. And it sounds like you've mastered that. You're OK sitting with work you know might not be what's going to end up in the tradition. But you're happy swimming in the work you're doing. It might eventually turn into something.
00:41:32
Speaker
Or it might not. So how have you gotten comfortable with that over the years? Well, as I said, there's encouragement. There's friendship. And it's nice when you get certain kinds of recognition for your work. I think getting some recognition for your work helps you understand that more work is possible. But the other thing I think I really figured out is that,
00:42:01
Speaker
there were levels at which I could do what I was doing. And I knew I was going to always write poems. You know, I was either going to be a guy who went to like Tuesday night, open mic and sort of spit his poems. And that was it. You know, that was going to be for my side hobby. Or, or I was going to be a guy that just wrote poems all the time or tried to and tried to make that the central focus of his life. Do you know what I mean? And once I figured out that I was going to be writing poems,
00:42:30
Speaker
all the time anyway, I said, well, I'm going to make it the central focus of my life. I'm not just going to make it a side hustle. It's not going to be a side hobby. Do you understand what I'm saying? So I think, um, the only thing that makes me any better at failing is just that I made up my mind a long time ago that everything had to be okay because I was going to do what I love most. You know, in any way you look at it, as long as you're doing what you love most, you could be failing. But if you're,
00:43:01
Speaker
enjoying it. It doesn't feel like failure. Do you have a favorite failure that propelled you to future notoriety or success or visibility? Yeah, I don't know. That's a really good question. I think one of the things that I'm proud of is the fact that the duplexes come from these lines that I couldn't get to work over.
00:43:28
Speaker
many, many years. I'm actually really proud that I kept up with all those lines. And when I was thinking about the form itself, I printed every line I had ever written that was not in a poem. I printed every poem that was drafted that wasn't done. And I cut them all up. And I spread them all over my house. Like they were all on the floors, all on the dining room table, all on the couches.
00:43:52
Speaker
And I began culling them, pulling out the ones I love best for whatever reason. I love them best, the ones I thought of as most striking or most unique or most original. And I just started putting them together, man. I just literally sat with those lines that had nothing, you know, one might have been written in 2005 and another one might have been written in 2010. And I put them next to each other and I decided since they sounded good together, they went together by my own will. And so I think of that
00:44:21
Speaker
as a moment of success for me, where I went back and I decided that these things that I hadn't used or hadn't yet made use of, that they were indeed going to be of use.
00:44:33
Speaker
I think I'd love to have you take us to the moment when you were sick with the flu and you were able to draft the idea and come up with what would eventually become this duplex that you so masterfully showcased in the tradition. So like, what was that? I thought I was going to die, man. It was crazy. Why didn't people talk about what the flu is?
00:45:01
Speaker
People are really sick. I'm so glad I had a flu shot. If I hadn't had a flu shot that fall, I would have died that winter because I was so sick with the flu. And I remember telling the doctor, how is it that I'm this sick if I got a flu shot? And he said, imagine how sick you would have been if you hadn't gotten the flu shot. And I was like, what? That's your response to me? Do you know I was so angry with him? You know what I mean?
00:45:29
Speaker
So, yeah, when I was sick, all I could think, I mean, I had no choice but to think about poetry because I really wanted to write. I really felt like I mean, I really I mean, I'm not exaggerating. I really felt like I was on the brink of death and I couldn't. And I was so afraid that I was going to die. And I had not finished my book.
00:45:51
Speaker
Isn't that crazy? Like that's the thing that I wasn't worried. I mean, maybe I'm a bad person because I wasn't, but I wasn't trying to like go see the Grand Canyon for the first time or like, I wasn't like, Oh, I never told this or that person. I love you. All I was thinking was, Oh my God, I'm in the middle of writing these poems and I'm sick and I'm not going to be able to finish my book.
00:46:13
Speaker
And somebody's gonna come and publish them and they're gonna put them in the wrong order. Do you know what I mean? Because I couldn't write and because I could sort of barely think, I could think more about this form that I had had in mind. And I sort of put the form together in my mind before I wrote a word of it while I was sick with the flu. And it sort of kept me alive, just sort of planning
00:46:41
Speaker
is what kept me alive. And as soon as I got better, man, that's when I printed all of those poems out. And I cut up the lines and I put them all over my house because I had the energy to do it. It was like the moment of gratitude. And I was going to show my gratitude by actually getting this form done and getting some poems written. And that was a joy for me. I remember walking around and just being so glad that I wasn't sick.
00:47:06
Speaker
The only other thing about having the flu, though, that was a good thing is it totally dehydrates you so you don't have any water in your body. Oh, my God, I was so skinny and happy. Yeah. And for people who might not like in your essay invention for a poetry foundation, you know, you you lay out the the formula, so to speak, of the of the duplex. So for people who might not be familiar with it, how would you describe it to them?
00:47:36
Speaker
Well, as I said, it's a poem that tries to, it's a form that takes on time and space through other forms. And when I say time and space, what I mean is in order to write it, it is at once three different forms.
00:48:00
Speaker
the same way I am a person at once of several identities, right? Like I am completely Southern and completely Black.
00:48:09
Speaker
I don't have to say that one third of me is black and one fifth of me is queer. Like, I don't have to do any of that. Everything I am, I am all the way. Isn't that something? Do you follow? And so I wanted to make a form that was the same. Like, how could I make a form that is as old as the Huzle? You know, the Huzle is one of our oldest forms. It's something like maybe sixth century Persian. And not just as old as the Huzle, but as, um,
00:48:38
Speaker
as constant as the sonnet. And I wanted something also that had
00:48:44
Speaker
kind of laughter and tears that comes with the blues. So I took the ideas and the structures of those three forms, and I made a form that has a repeated line, that is 14 lines, that is 9 to 11 syllables, a line, again,
Themes in 'The Tradition'
00:49:03
Speaker
marrying east to west. Thinking about the iambic pentameter line is actually, you know, if you're strict, 10 syllables. So if I have a syllable count for each line by syllabics,
00:49:14
Speaker
then nine to 11 syllables would approximate that, but also not make me have to write a metrical poem. Do you see what I mean? And it's a form that includes those because I wanted to know what it was like to make something in the world that could be the manifestation of how I feel in the world. And often in the world, I feel like a mutt. So I wanted a mutt of a form, right? You know, I always think mutts are the best dogs because they have the best of all the dogs.
00:49:44
Speaker
I wanted a form that had the best of all the forms. And I called it a duplex because I was thinking about that structure, that house, the literal real estate that we call a duplex, and how it's a shared space between two families with a law.
00:50:00
Speaker
And that on either side of that wall, there has to be some sharing going on because there's one house with two addresses here. What happens if that wall comes down? What happens if you hear what's going on on the other side of the wall? We've been talking about the wall a lot in this country lately. And so I think that had something to do with me calling it a duplex. Also, obviously, the poems in couplets. And so I was thinking about those
00:50:28
Speaker
those twos coming to us, those couplets coming to us in a different way each time they appear, the seven times that they appear in the poem. And how that line changes, you know, that repeated line has to be repeated after itself, which is hard. It's hard to say a thing than say a thing again and repurpose it the second time. You know, that can get monotonous.
00:50:49
Speaker
I think the hardest thing about writing a duplex is making it so it doesn't sound monotonous. So that the second time you say the same line you've already said, you've changed it in a way so that that line is brand new. So it's like new, and then it's new again almost immediately. That's the real challenge of writing that poem.
00:51:10
Speaker
And Maya Phillips, her great review of the tradition in the New York Times. It was so nice. It was a great review. And deserved, I should say, as well. And at the end, she writes in Brown's poems, The Body at Risk, the infected body, the abused body, the black body, the body in Eros.
00:51:32
Speaker
is 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. And I wonder what you make of that. Yeah, well, I'll just say that she's right.
00:51:53
Speaker
You know, I really, I, it was amazing when we read, I mean, it's hard for me to talk about this review without getting emotion because when I read it, I really feel like she got it. And you know, when you're writing poems, you have to let them go. You can't hold on to your own interpretations of your work because part of what you're doing is you're giving something to people and they're gonna do with it what they need to do and they're gonna have different interpretations from yours. But she showed me things in that review that I really hadn't thought of
00:52:22
Speaker
in my own work in a conscious way, but I knew I had thought of in unconscious ways. So I'm just very proud.
00:52:29
Speaker
of that review. I mean, you know, obviously, I'm a writer, so we like it when we get things like a review in the New York Times. That's huge. It makes me very happy. I'm all here. Like, you know, I know poets are generally, you know, very, what is the word, modest and humble and everything. And, you know, I can play that game, too. But I don't feel that way when I write a poem.
00:52:54
Speaker
You know, there's a way that a football player feels when he makes a touchdown, and he shows you he feels that way because he does some sort of motion to let you know. When we go to the football game, when he makes that touchdown, the crowd shares in that feeling. We share in that emotion that he has, right? Do you understand what I mean? And that's how I feel about my poems. And when there's recognition, and that's that crowd, right, I feel it all the more. So I'm not sad about
00:53:24
Speaker
recognition from this world, because I know I work damn hard on my poems. But yeah, so I think she's right about that. And I think there are many experiences. One of the things, for instance, in the book
00:53:38
Speaker
that I'm writing about many traditions, as Maya Phillips mentioned, and one of those is the tradition of mistreatment that Black people have to endure from police in this country, the tradition of very corrupt policing in the United States of America,
00:53:57
Speaker
the tradition of murder of unarmed people by police officers, which goes back very far and which happens to black and brown people in ways that it doesn't happen to anyone else. And so she's absolutely right that I feel that that's a tradition that I'm sort of asking questions about, right? And about how normal
00:54:24
Speaker
that he is, how every time the police officer is not indicted, and how that has happened and will continue to happen, how Black people sort of sit on the brink of that every time he's not indicted, hoping he will be indicted, and then he's not. Do you know what I mean? It's like watching a movie over and over again, right? Like, obviously there's something wrong with this system. And yet, because of who it affects, nothing is being done to change it.
00:54:52
Speaker
That's because of who it affects. You understand what I'm saying? People are always asking these questions about things like things like abortion. You let a man get pregnant and not want to have a baby. Things will change. But because of who it affects, we have questions about abortion. But anyway, let me let that go. I don't want to get into it. Yeah.
Organizing a Poetry Collection
00:55:14
Speaker
When I was talking to Mary Carr a while ago about her latest book of poetry, Tropic of Squalor,
00:55:21
Speaker
Oh, she's wonderful and just kind of a hero of mine as well. And I was just talking to her about how she goes about not only writing these poems but how they track together in a collection of poetry, like where she's going to insert track one versus track two and how they play off each other.
00:55:45
Speaker
So I'd extend that question to you. When you wrote these poems, I doubt you wrote them linearly, but I bet after you wrote them you're like, oh, this one's going to fit in nicely here. And so how did you process and synthesize that once you were writing these? So they played off each other in a fluid way.
00:56:05
Speaker
You know what I've done in the past and what I did a little bit in this book is that I went from last line to title. Um, and by that, what I mean is that associatively, if you read the last line of a poem, then associatively the title seems to me another line of that same poem. So that it's hard for you to, hopefully it's hard for you to put the book down because you have,
00:56:31
Speaker
you have the sense that that poem is still continuing. And so as you're reading, you begin to feel like you're reading one long poem. The book's in sections, so maybe there's a way you feel like you're reading three long poems. Do you understand what I'm saying in each section of the book? And so that's the kind of
00:56:50
Speaker
That's the kind of thing that I was doing when I put the book in order. One example of that would be to go from page 27 at the end of the duplex on page 27. The last line of that poem is,
00:57:07
Speaker
the opposite of rape is understanding. And then when you turn the page on page 28, the title of that poem is riddle. So there's something riddle-ish, I think, in the line, the opposite of rape is understanding. And then to get that next line makes you feel like, oh, well, maybe I'm going to find out what that
00:57:26
Speaker
with more about what that means. Do you see what I mean? And I think that's sort of my method, just for making sure that people can stay in it. You know, I don't want them to put the book down, I want them to read it, and then I want them to read it again. Or, you know, even if you look on, if you're looking at the book, and you look on something like
00:57:44
Speaker
where the tradition is on page 10. The last line of that poem is, of course, John Crawford, Eric Garner, Mike Brown. And you know, I'm thinking about these figures in a certain way, and I'm trying to change our lens through which we see these murdered men, right? And so then the title of the next poem is Hero.
00:58:06
Speaker
because that's the way I want to think about John Crawford, Eric Garner, and Mike Brown, right? Right after that, the last line of that poem, Hero, is, thank God it can't get much darker than that. But then the next line is, after another country. So it can't get much darker than that, suggesting a certain end, right? And then after another country, suggesting there is something even after that end.
00:58:32
Speaker
The last line of that poem is of the water. The next title is water lilies. So I'm sort of creating a chain among the poems that moves beyond whatever the theme of the poems are into just the idea that associatively the reader will always feel like they're getting more information about the last thing that they heard.
00:58:53
Speaker
What would you say, Jericho, that you're maybe you're better at today than you were, say, five years ago?
00:59:04
Speaker
Hmm, that's a good question. You know, I don't get as mad as I used to. I used to be such an angry young person. I always wanted to fight everybody. And I haven't been in a fight in a long time. I'm much better at letting things go. And I'm better at doing that thing that human beings do. I think this is how you're supposed to. I've never really understood it. But I think when you're upset with a situation, you're supposed to deal with it.
00:59:25
Speaker
with a certain kind of calm. And I'm not the calmest person in the world, but I'm better at the etiquette of that. I'm a much more social being, I think, because in the last five years, I've been writing very direct, very hard.
00:59:44
Speaker
poems that I think of as cultural activist poems. So maybe a lot of the trouble I was having with the world that would come out in me trying to cut somebody out, maybe that's actually coming through in my poems in a way that it doesn't have to come through in my life. So maybe that's different.
01:00:03
Speaker
Yeah, it seems like your poems are inflected with such power and movement and economy of emotion per word if there's a ratio that could be measured in that. So it sounds like maybe you've found a great way to channel some of that outward aggression into these books and into this work that is all the more affecting. I think so. Yeah, I think so.
01:00:31
Speaker
And in the process of your writing, where would you say you feel most engaged and most alive in the process? Well, you know, when I get a lie, it's always nice. So I think just the initial point. And then so it's sort of the very beginning, like knowing, oh, I have a line and something's going to come from it or it's going to go into something. And then at the end, when I'm revising, I remember in my first book, Please,
01:01:01
Speaker
which is published by New Issues, I remember very distinctly working with the manuscript at its end right before it went off to print, and there was this one poem that I couldn't get right, and the managing editor there at the time, Mary Ann Syringa, she told me, she said,
01:01:23
Speaker
why don't you just, and I can't remember the punctuation, but let's say it was a colon instead of a dash or a dash instead of a period. She said, why don't you just use a dash? And I did in this poem, it was like the last little edit to the entirety of my book was a dash. It was the craziest feeling, man. I felt like, oh my God, my book is done. I felt like I literally had written
01:01:52
Speaker
the entirety of the book in a single keystroke. Do you know what I'm saying? Because I had finally figured out this one piece of punctuation that wasn't right before that time.
01:02:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's great when someone else with fresh eyes can come across something of that nature, and it's something so simple on its surface, but it really just unlocked the whole thing for you. Yeah, yeah. Well, Jericho, you've been incredibly generous with your time. I know you're sleep-deprived, and I'd love nothing more for you than to go take a nap and
Supporting Independent Bookstores
01:02:28
Speaker
maybe grab one. I'm going to catch this nap. I really am, yeah. Fantastic. I have ordered some room service.
01:02:34
Speaker
So where can people get more familiar with your work and maybe find you online if they don't know how to find you already? Well, I'm there at JerichoBrown.com, but you know the book You can get the book You can get the book at JerichoBrown.com as well. I'm hoping I'm really hoping that people buy books
01:02:59
Speaker
by books through their independent bookstores. I would like for this book to be another reason that people are going to their independent bookstore. So if you go to indiebound.org,
01:03:13
Speaker
you can order the book and you can get it from an independent bookseller in your area. You can also find out at indybound.org where your independent bookseller is if you're not already aware of it. I'm really interested in doing what I can to support these small bookstores, these businesses that uphold poetry in ways that
01:03:38
Speaker
Other bookstores will not, I'm not going to see books of poetry, or at least not very many books of poetry, in the airport bookstore. Your Barnes and Noble poetry section is generally smaller than what the poetry section is going to be in an independent bookstore. And so these stores have, in their mom and pop business kind of way, supported us throughout these years.
01:04:05
Speaker
and they are locations, the literal space of the independent bookstore.
01:04:10
Speaker
is a place where a lot of cultural work is going on and a lot of activism is going on. It's a place where people are going to read and going to talk and learning each other and meeting one another. Readings are happening there. Demonstrations are happening there. And there is a literal exchange. And I want to be clear about this, because, you know, I have all kinds of questions about why we participate in capitalism, which is not of use to any of us. And yet
01:04:36
Speaker
I understand that we put our money where our mouths are. Do you understand what I mean? And so the Independent Bookstore allows us the opportunity to support the artists who are asking these questions that will make a difference to our culture and to our social world. That is what I'm interested in. And so I'm hoping people get the book at indiebound.org.
01:04:57
Speaker
I-N-D-I-E, bound.org, or at their independent bookseller. And I hope all the independent booksellers in the world hear me saying that, because I really want them to know that I'm here supporting them and that the poets are here for you, as you have been there for the poets. So, you know, continue, please, dear independent bookstores, please continue to hand-sell us and shelf-talk us and to get these books out into the hands of the people of the world.
01:05:23
Speaker
Well, the tradition in all your work is deserving of the shelf talking and the hand selling. It is brilliant work. Here in Eugene, Oregon, we've got several independent bookstores that I no doubt have your book and would tout it. So in any case, it's deserved of the recognition you're getting. And I'm just so pleased that we got to talk for an hour here, Jericho. So thanks again for coming on the show. All right. Thank you so much.