Jericho Brown

Mm-hmm.

I mean, I think of Jericho Brown and Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Jorie Graham, and I mean, the, just the list goes on and on.

And Géraldine Brooks, right? I mean, Langston Hughes.

Like, there is some amazing work out there, and I'm kind of laughing, though, thinking about all of this excellent work, and then you give me Peck & Peck, and everyone's kind of like, "Well, they've got big feelings, and they've got big opinions." And some of them are frankly wrong.

That is exactly, exactly true.

I just, poetry is, I mean, when I think of the range of the form alone, right? Like, haiku, seven syllables, 14 syllables, seven syllables.

Um, when I think of what Jericho Brown does, right? When I think, uh, I mean, there's just, there's so much great work out there that you can just dip in and out of.

If you have commitment issues with art, poetry's a really great place to start, and then everyone has big feelings about poetry.

Oh.

Like someone asked me to sign Jericho Brown's book one time.

What?

It's, like, not even close.

He shapes his entire poetic genealogy.

For me, I love this anthology, How We Do It, edited by Jericho Brown and his work.

There's so many contemporary poets that I'm learning to love and appreciate.

The opportunity to be quilted by that black-eyed pea, that Nikki Giovanni, or to shake loose my skin like Sonia Sanchez, to rise above it all like Maya Angelou, to sit on a cold day and read Robert Hayden's work, to sit there for me, to be in Chicago, hanging out on Bronzeville, loving Gwendolyn Brooks and the way that she loved her city.

What's the poem pointing towards? What questions am I asking? And what am I learning as I journey through the poem? Because when I began, I didn't know what was going to happen next.

And so, you know, Jericho Brown talks about this idea that you get to the end of the poem and you discover something that you didn't know before.

And that's the beauty of it.

And if the reader has that revelation as well, you've both arrived there together.

That was his day job.

And he had a different name at that time, but he now goes by the name of Jericho Brown.

Okay, another big name for the non-poetry folks.

I mean, George Dorfko Brown is...