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Poetry. African American Studies. LGBT Studies. PLEASE explores the points in our lives at which love and violence intersect. Drunk on its own rhythms and full of imaginative and often frightening imagery, PLEASE is the album playing in the background of the history and culture that surround African American/male identity and sexuality. Just as radio favorites like Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway, and Pink Floyd characterize loss, loneliness, addiction, and denial with their voices, these poems' chorus of speakers transform moments of intimacy and humor into spontaneous music. In PLEASE, Jericho Brown sings the influence soul culture has on American life with the accuracy of the blues.
69 pages, Paperback
First published October 20, 2008
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2215 people want to read
About the author
Jericho Brown
37 books602 followersJericho Brown worked as the speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before receiving his PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. He also holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans and a BA from Dillard University. The recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, the Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, and two travel fellowships to the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, Brown teaches at the University of San Diego where he is the Director of the Cropper Center for Creative Writing. His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, jubilat, Oxford American, A Public Space, and several other journals and anthologies. PLEASE, his first book, won the 2009 American Book Award.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
March 29, 2020
This poetry collection overwhelmed me. I can sense that there is something in there. Something. In there. I am confused. So instead of trying to give you a sense of what Jericho's poems are about, I will let the text on the back cover speak for itself:
I am honestly amazed that this is Jericho Brown's debut collection, I mean, it doesn't get much more badass than that. Please plays like a mix tape of old standards, R&B, and a little rock 'n' roll. Every poem is a track on that disc that provides the background music to your life. It has a unique rythm. It flows. It hurts. In a 2009 interview with Open Source's Christopher Lydon, Jericho said, “I wanted to hit other people on the back with a belt, and make them like it, too.” Well, that he achieved.
The tension of the subject matter is mirrored in the tension of the beat. There is a constant tease of iambic rhythm in the lines mixed up with frequent stressed syllables to create a kind of syncopation like a snare drumbeat in the background of Jericho’s song. The heavy beat is underscored by his use of pauses. Every line except the first and last is enjambed. This, combined with full stops in the middle of the lines, creates a breathiness to the work, like a singer performing a slow tune in a dark nightclub.
The collection is organized in four sections, Repeat, Pause, Power, and Stop. I picture not a fancy digital CD machine but an old tape player, buttons worn from constant use, tape looping and looping as the poems in Please loop and often come full circle.
Repeat is filled with reflections from childhood and with the inevitable imprint childhood leaves on the present. With the constant interweaving of childhood and the present, Brown seems to be saying that we are condemned to repeat the patterns of our childhood in our present relationships.
In Pause, the poems deal with relationships, with failed and lost love. They speak of anger, love, and lust with brutal honesty. Brown said in his Open Source interview that he was interested in, “the music that was playing in the background while history is being made.” But his poems do not stay in the background. They jump out from the page. They burn skin.
Whereas in Pause, many of the poems feel like laments written from a place of powerlessness, the love poems in Power are often playfully wicked and vengeful. Clearly, he is no longer the man standing barefoot in a field of glass splinters, watching in silence as his man leaves. Here, Brown has the power; he is breaking the glass.
From divas to crickets to his parents’ snores, everything sings in Jericho's lines, and each of his poems opens a door into this world of music. The final section of the book is called Stop, the “liner notes” for the songs in this mix tape. These notes speak of the tumultuous and tragic stories of the singers Brown has chosen to write about as well as the tumultuous times in which the songs were born. But as brutal as his work is, he does not leave the reader on the floor, grasping for breath. He gives something back. Something that is in there. In this collection. I am overwhelmed.
Please explores the points in our lives at which love and violence intersect. Drunk on its own rhythms and full of imaginative and often frightening imagery, Please is the album playing in the background of the history and culture that surround African American/male identity and sexuality. Just as radio favorites like Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway, and Pink Floyd characterize loss, loneliness, addiction, and denial with their voices, these poems' chorus of speakers transform moments of intimacy and humor into spontaneous music.So, this book really wasn't written for me. I'm not African American. I am not male. I am not gay. I wasn't raised in a strongly religious southern environment. However, the themes of loss and loneliness are so universal, that I couldn't help but connect with most of what Jericho had to say. And even though I didn't have to suffer through the things he has suffered through, even though I didn't have to witness my dad beating my mum senseless, I felt like I was there with him. And it wasn't a pleasant feeling. Some of his words will punch in the face, claw at you, and not release you until you give blood.
I am honestly amazed that this is Jericho Brown's debut collection, I mean, it doesn't get much more badass than that. Please plays like a mix tape of old standards, R&B, and a little rock 'n' roll. Every poem is a track on that disc that provides the background music to your life. It has a unique rythm. It flows. It hurts. In a 2009 interview with Open Source's Christopher Lydon, Jericho said, “I wanted to hit other people on the back with a belt, and make them like it, too.” Well, that he achieved.
Track 1: Lush LifeI don't know what it is about his poetry, but on the one hand I feel like I don't understand what he's trying to communicate, and on the other hand I know exactly what he's talking about. It is terrifying, but also somewhat comforting?
The woman with the microphone sings to hurt you,
To see you shake your head. The mic may as well
Be a leather belt. You drive to the center of town
To be whipped by a woman’s voice. You can’t tell
The difference between a leather belt and a lover’s
Tongue. A lover’s tongue might call you bitch,
A term of endearment where you come from, a kind
Of compliment preceded by the word sing
In certain nightclubs. A lush little tongue
You have: you can yell, Sing bitch, and, I love you,
With a shot of Patrón at the end of each phrase
From the same barstool every Saturday night, but you can't
Remember your father's leather belt without shaking
Your head. That's what satisfies her, the woman
With the microphone. She does not mean to entertain
You, and neither do I. Speak to me in a lover's tongue—
Call me your bitch, and I'll sing the whole night long.
The tension of the subject matter is mirrored in the tension of the beat. There is a constant tease of iambic rhythm in the lines mixed up with frequent stressed syllables to create a kind of syncopation like a snare drumbeat in the background of Jericho’s song. The heavy beat is underscored by his use of pauses. Every line except the first and last is enjambed. This, combined with full stops in the middle of the lines, creates a breathiness to the work, like a singer performing a slow tune in a dark nightclub.
The collection is organized in four sections, Repeat, Pause, Power, and Stop. I picture not a fancy digital CD machine but an old tape player, buttons worn from constant use, tape looping and looping as the poems in Please loop and often come full circle.
Repeat is filled with reflections from childhood and with the inevitable imprint childhood leaves on the present. With the constant interweaving of childhood and the present, Brown seems to be saying that we are condemned to repeat the patterns of our childhood in our present relationships.
In Pause, the poems deal with relationships, with failed and lost love. They speak of anger, love, and lust with brutal honesty. Brown said in his Open Source interview that he was interested in, “the music that was playing in the background while history is being made.” But his poems do not stay in the background. They jump out from the page. They burn skin.
Whereas in Pause, many of the poems feel like laments written from a place of powerlessness, the love poems in Power are often playfully wicked and vengeful. Clearly, he is no longer the man standing barefoot in a field of glass splinters, watching in silence as his man leaves. Here, Brown has the power; he is breaking the glass.
From divas to crickets to his parents’ snores, everything sings in Jericho's lines, and each of his poems opens a door into this world of music. The final section of the book is called Stop, the “liner notes” for the songs in this mix tape. These notes speak of the tumultuous and tragic stories of the singers Brown has chosen to write about as well as the tumultuous times in which the songs were born. But as brutal as his work is, he does not leave the reader on the floor, grasping for breath. He gives something back. Something that is in there. In this collection. I am overwhelmed.
September 11, 2011
Dear God, Please will hurt you - in a good way. It's a very physical and lyrical book of poetry that just goes right through you with one seamless poem followed by another. Think of an extended metaphor, music as the medium, in which we are allowed to experience the speaker's pain in bass; joy, with its fierce undying love, ("Sean"; "Betty Jo Jackson"; "Like Father") sung in soprano until you are spent; and, throw in nothing less than a beautiful voice laced with male eroticism, its bluesy, smoky undertones and you'll end up with poetry so fine it rises to operatic heights. Lastly, let's not forget the title, Please, with its loaded innuendos and you've got a compelling book that begs to be read.
What is the most interesting part of reading this book is the voice, how intimate it is with the self: i.e., I get the feeling the speaker is speaking mostly to himself rather than intimating to a perceived audience. Think of the word, "intimate" as a verb rather than as an adjective. These poems speak to some deeper core of existence - where the "you" becomes the "I" and the distance becomes neglible. Also, the poems' strengths lie in their immediacy - we cut to the chase with not a lot of build up, or false starts and bookend conclusions; immediacy is, in essence, what makes the poems strong and instantaneously rewarding - that "aha yes!" moment. In fairness, the weakest two poems are "Autobiography" and "Tin Man." These two poems read too much like lists. Aside from those two experimental poems the rest are tight and well executed. Pick up a copy of PLEASE and please read it so you can dispel the notion that most of today's poetry is dreck. You just have to find the good poetry and finding takes some searching - a little work on the part of the reader. I have done some of the work for you with Please.
Sample Poem:
Track 1: Lush Life
The woman with the microphone sings to hurt you,
To see you shake your head. The mic may as well
Be a leather belt. You drive to the center of town
To be whipped by a woman’s voice. You can’t tell
The difference between a leather belt and a lover’s
Tongue. A lover’s tongue might call you bitch,
A term of endearment where you come from, a kind
Of compliment preceded by the word sing
In certain nightclubs. A lush little tongue
You have: you can yell, Sing bitch, and, I love you,
With a shot of Patrón at the end of each phrase
From the same barstool every Saturday night, but you can’t
Remember your father’s leather belt without shaking
Your head. That’s what satisfies her, the woman
With the microphone. She does not mean to entertain
You, and neither do I. Speak to me in a lover’s tongue—
Call me your bitch, and I’ll sing the whole night long.
What is the most interesting part of reading this book is the voice, how intimate it is with the self: i.e., I get the feeling the speaker is speaking mostly to himself rather than intimating to a perceived audience. Think of the word, "intimate" as a verb rather than as an adjective. These poems speak to some deeper core of existence - where the "you" becomes the "I" and the distance becomes neglible. Also, the poems' strengths lie in their immediacy - we cut to the chase with not a lot of build up, or false starts and bookend conclusions; immediacy is, in essence, what makes the poems strong and instantaneously rewarding - that "aha yes!" moment. In fairness, the weakest two poems are "Autobiography" and "Tin Man." These two poems read too much like lists. Aside from those two experimental poems the rest are tight and well executed. Pick up a copy of PLEASE and please read it so you can dispel the notion that most of today's poetry is dreck. You just have to find the good poetry and finding takes some searching - a little work on the part of the reader. I have done some of the work for you with Please.
Sample Poem:
Track 1: Lush Life
The woman with the microphone sings to hurt you,
To see you shake your head. The mic may as well
Be a leather belt. You drive to the center of town
To be whipped by a woman’s voice. You can’t tell
The difference between a leather belt and a lover’s
Tongue. A lover’s tongue might call you bitch,
A term of endearment where you come from, a kind
Of compliment preceded by the word sing
In certain nightclubs. A lush little tongue
You have: you can yell, Sing bitch, and, I love you,
With a shot of Patrón at the end of each phrase
From the same barstool every Saturday night, but you can’t
Remember your father’s leather belt without shaking
Your head. That’s what satisfies her, the woman
With the microphone. She does not mean to entertain
You, and neither do I. Speak to me in a lover’s tongue—
Call me your bitch, and I’ll sing the whole night long.
April 9, 2013
The Burning Bush
Lizard’s shade turned torch, what thorns I bore
Nomadic shepherds clipped. Still,
I’ve stood, a soldier listening for the word,
Attack, a prophet praying any ember be spoken
Through me in this desert full of fugitives.
Now, I have a voice. Entered, I am lit.
Remember me for this sprouting fire,
For the lash of flaming tongues that lick
But do not swallow my leaves, my flimsy
Branches. No ash behind, I burn to bloom.
I am not consumed. I am not consumed.
Lizard’s shade turned torch, what thorns I bore
Nomadic shepherds clipped. Still,
I’ve stood, a soldier listening for the word,
Attack, a prophet praying any ember be spoken
Through me in this desert full of fugitives.
Now, I have a voice. Entered, I am lit.
Remember me for this sprouting fire,
For the lash of flaming tongues that lick
But do not swallow my leaves, my flimsy
Branches. No ash behind, I burn to bloom.
I am not consumed. I am not consumed.
December 13, 2008
What gives most pleasure in this book is its willingness to struggle with identity, and to embrace the fact that struggle consists of actions that bring him closer to understanding. Or maybe a more appropriate way to say it is that the struggle makes him more fully human.
March 29, 2009
I love this book because Jericho put some much love into it. Drawing from his personal experiences as well as his love of R&B, he's created quite a collection.
December 29, 2014
a lot to like, a brave book
June 18, 2025
Wow, this is a stunning collection. I honestly found I could only read 2 or 3 in a single sitting but I savored every day in this writer's hands.
Nothing flowery about these poems, they lies at the intersection of love and violence which is truly a complicated and dangerous place. They felt immediate and a little scary. The are also tender and thoughtful. It's a slim volume with a lot to digest. I will look into more of Jericho Brown's work.
Nothing flowery about these poems, they lies at the intersection of love and violence which is truly a complicated and dangerous place. They felt immediate and a little scary. The are also tender and thoughtful. It's a slim volume with a lot to digest. I will look into more of Jericho Brown's work.
June 4, 2021
I have worked my way backwards through Jericho Brown's astonishing books of poems, arriving at last to his first collection, 2008's "Please." I have no doubt that he is one of the greatest living poets writing in the English language, and we are so fortunate to have his voice.
May 3, 2009
There are three sections of poems in this book, with each section titled after a button on a stereo, though obviously they’re also words with resonance: REPEAT, and PAUSE, and POWER. Music, both as trope and as thing, the idea of song and actual songs and musicians, figure heavily. As for the poems themselves, I like how they’re smart and conversational, I like their wryness, and I like that they’re poems that tell stories. There’s casual violence in these poems, a father beating his son with a leather belt, a backhanded slap across the cheek, and racism and dirt and grit and cockroaches teeming in the kitchen, but that isn’t to say they’re unpleasant to read.
May 18, 2012
Jericho Brown is going to be a huge, big, voice in American poetry. Some sublime lines throughout the book, and, while I normally don't go for this, the performance oriented boldness of the poems gave it all the right kind of muscle.
August 21, 2011
Read this while vacationing at Hammonasset Beach this weekend. Really liked some of the poems, but had a hard time relating to most of them.
July 12, 2021
There are at least two poems here about Hathaway. These are woven into a sequence of poems about alcoholism, constraining religion, and the poet's father, including the one that follows "Track 8: Song for You." "Song for You" is the Donny Hathaway track, from a Leon Russell song, that many have recognized as a deeply felt excavation of same-sex preferred desire: "I know your image of me is what I hope to be" is just one of the lyrics that probes, sensitively, the worlds "of no space and time" that cross in the imagining of another's suppressed desire. Brown's "Like Father" similarly excavates the terrain of tenderness and fear that exist between a speaker who has out-ed himself to his religious father. With Donny Hathaway, presumably there was no outing, but the artist's grandparents were devoutly religious, and as in Brown's "Like Father," Hathaway's kin may well have begged "forgiveness | For anything he may have done to make me | Turn to abomination, | As he watches my eggs scrambled | Soft." A trope in these lines around procreative generation runs throughout these woven sequences, as in "Track 8" the speaker's boyfriend jacks off on top of the poet's cries as the next-door neighbors turn up the volume on the Natalie Cole version of the Hathaway cover to drown out the ecstatic lovers, and the speaker takes joy not just in the sexuality but in the simultaneous discovering another "Song For You" cover, in spite of the tragedy of the singers' lives, ever-present in the speaker's relishing of his grace. Hathaway's tragedy is more discretely alluded to in "Fall," which insists on not just the voice of the suicide Hathaway, but on the bystanders, the witnesses to the obscurity into which the artist's suicide seemed (for a time, at least) to relegate him.
March 1, 2021
"God's got his eye on me, but I ain't a sparrow. / I'm more like a lawn mower... no, a chainsaw" (19).
Jericho Brown will be at one of the virtual events for St Andrews' annual poetry festival (StAnza) in two weeks, and I'm so excited! He has such a commanding poetic presence and grasp of biblical nuance. And Ilya Kaminsky will be at an event too, so I'm in heaven!
Jericho Brown will be at one of the virtual events for St Andrews' annual poetry festival (StAnza) in two weeks, and I'm so excited! He has such a commanding poetic presence and grasp of biblical nuance. And Ilya Kaminsky will be at an event too, so I'm in heaven!
November 14, 2022
„What does this field / feel for the plow?“
October 11, 2017
La experiencia poética parece atada, desde Rimbaud, a aquella imposible paradoja de lectura encapsulada en el "yo es otro". La experiencia de lectura, y toda lectura literaria es, en el fondo, una lectura poética, se atraviesa con ese sentido de la otredad, y debe, entonces, permitir al lector oficiante una expansión de su ser, por vías de olvido y evasión, como ocurre con los narradores realmente entretenidos; o de constante señalamiento y confrontación, como ocurre con los poetas reales, como ocurre con este libro de Jericho Brown.
La intimidad consignada en Please consigue crear un espejo en el lector. La experiencia del poeta, condensada en las cuatro partes del libro, se estructura en forma de melodía (de ahí que las cuatro partes sean "Power", "Pause", "Stop", "Repeat"), para incitar, por medio del canto, el abandono de los límites entre éste y quien lee. La música como espacio de comunión es, deliberadamente, uno de los centros temáticos de los poemas. El jazz, el R&B, la desgarradura del blues; pistas de interpretación sobre los mecanismos emulados por el poeta.
En general, Please es un libro sobre el amor y el dolor, ninguno de los dos teñido con ecos del romanticismo. No, aquí no hay un genio infuso en elucubraciones platónicas ni en consternaciones metafísicas. Hay un cuerpo, negro y homosexual, enfrentado a la soledad al rechazo tanto como a la violencia doméstica, a las relaciones tóxicas, al sexo inmensamente ligado a la agresividad y la ternura.
La familia, la pobreza, el desamor, la muerte, la esfinge de la figura paterna. Los temas permiten cercanía, generan un temblor sustentado, afortunadamente, en un lenguaje potente. La traducción de Andrea Cote se esmera en la literalidad del mensaje, a costa, claro, de cierta musicalidad. Por fortuna, el libro incluye los originales en inglés, y puede hacerse, entonces, una lectura-relectura afortunada en ambos idiomas, comprobando, en cada caso, la exigencia oral en la escritura de Brown. La partición de los versos, la entonación en los yambos, todo aparece propicio para la lectura en voz alta. Ni siquiera mi terrible acento de antioqueño hablando en inglés consiguió arruinarlos, y eso es decir mucho.
Les dejo este Family portrait, para que se animen a leer a Brown:
Y la traducción de Andrea Cote:
La intimidad consignada en Please consigue crear un espejo en el lector. La experiencia del poeta, condensada en las cuatro partes del libro, se estructura en forma de melodía (de ahí que las cuatro partes sean "Power", "Pause", "Stop", "Repeat"), para incitar, por medio del canto, el abandono de los límites entre éste y quien lee. La música como espacio de comunión es, deliberadamente, uno de los centros temáticos de los poemas. El jazz, el R&B, la desgarradura del blues; pistas de interpretación sobre los mecanismos emulados por el poeta.
En general, Please es un libro sobre el amor y el dolor, ninguno de los dos teñido con ecos del romanticismo. No, aquí no hay un genio infuso en elucubraciones platónicas ni en consternaciones metafísicas. Hay un cuerpo, negro y homosexual, enfrentado a la soledad al rechazo tanto como a la violencia doméstica, a las relaciones tóxicas, al sexo inmensamente ligado a la agresividad y la ternura.
La familia, la pobreza, el desamor, la muerte, la esfinge de la figura paterna. Los temas permiten cercanía, generan un temblor sustentado, afortunadamente, en un lenguaje potente. La traducción de Andrea Cote se esmera en la literalidad del mensaje, a costa, claro, de cierta musicalidad. Por fortuna, el libro incluye los originales en inglés, y puede hacerse, entonces, una lectura-relectura afortunada en ambos idiomas, comprobando, en cada caso, la exigencia oral en la escritura de Brown. La partición de los versos, la entonación en los yambos, todo aparece propicio para la lectura en voz alta. Ni siquiera mi terrible acento de antioqueño hablando en inglés consiguió arruinarlos, y eso es decir mucho.
Les dejo este Family portrait, para que se animen a leer a Brown:
FAMILY PORTRAIT
My breath is also released
As I shiver onto my boyfriend's back
Then open my eyes to the faces
Of my children, faintly
Sketched in white swirls
On brown skin-the only place
He can carry them. Out of my body,
They look less like me
Than like my mother and father
Who will die when I do. Their mouths
Poised to blame, I wipe them away
Before they can speak. (120)
Y la traducción de Andrea Cote:
RETRATO DE FAMILIA
Mi respiración también descansa
Mientras me estremezco sobre la espalda de mi novio,
Entonces, abro los ojos a los rostros
De mis hijos, débilmente
Esbozados en remolinos blancos
Sobre piel marrón-el único lugar donde
Él puede cargarlos. Fuera de mi cuerpo
Se parecen menos a mí
Que a mi madre y a mi padre
Que morirán conmigo. Sus bocas
Ya preparadas para culpar. Las borro
Antes de que puedan hablar. (121)
November 6, 2010
Jericho Brown promises no revelations. His poems are tight, trimmed of excess, lyrical and lonely.
I want to answer their questions
Tell them the dead man’s name
But I cannot identify the broken body.
Even I don’t know who he is.
His poems are home to the hardest questions: Can a boy love the father who whips him? What’s the best way to injure, after departure, the person one loves?
How best to hurt you.
Fling a pitcher of sweet tea.
Leave
All the lights on.
Phone your mother
And threaten cremation.
Set fire to your cassettes
Brown says, “Write what you can’t stop thinking about. Write what’s on your mind.” For him, this is love and the complication of loving. It is the fact of violence, and the conflict in forgiveness. It is, especially, the strange tension between nostalgia and suffering — the way the poet transforms that tension into art.
We learn to listen to music
Over hollers, through
Smoke. Her soprano comes across
A photograph in giggles,
But ends up crying,
Save me. We think we’d like that
Kind of love, sad and steeped
In trumpets, though a block up
The entire decade shoots
For words to put in the dictionary:
Crackhead, drive-by. Loss
Jericho Brown converts life’s tragedies to rhythmic stories about family, about love and home, about Southern culture’s ragged edge. These poems wake the reader from reverie. They place him at the moment of rupture. If poetry is a literature of the heartbeat, then Brown’s poems are the blood that infuses its song. They fuel the poet, in the middle of the stage, holding the final note, proving by raw emotion the universality of human kinship.
~Carlin M. Wragg, Editor, Open Loop Press
I want to answer their questions
Tell them the dead man’s name
But I cannot identify the broken body.
Even I don’t know who he is.
His poems are home to the hardest questions: Can a boy love the father who whips him? What’s the best way to injure, after departure, the person one loves?
How best to hurt you.
Fling a pitcher of sweet tea.
Leave
All the lights on.
Phone your mother
And threaten cremation.
Set fire to your cassettes
Brown says, “Write what you can’t stop thinking about. Write what’s on your mind.” For him, this is love and the complication of loving. It is the fact of violence, and the conflict in forgiveness. It is, especially, the strange tension between nostalgia and suffering — the way the poet transforms that tension into art.
We learn to listen to music
Over hollers, through
Smoke. Her soprano comes across
A photograph in giggles,
But ends up crying,
Save me. We think we’d like that
Kind of love, sad and steeped
In trumpets, though a block up
The entire decade shoots
For words to put in the dictionary:
Crackhead, drive-by. Loss
Jericho Brown converts life’s tragedies to rhythmic stories about family, about love and home, about Southern culture’s ragged edge. These poems wake the reader from reverie. They place him at the moment of rupture. If poetry is a literature of the heartbeat, then Brown’s poems are the blood that infuses its song. They fuel the poet, in the middle of the stage, holding the final note, proving by raw emotion the universality of human kinship.
~Carlin M. Wragg, Editor, Open Loop Press
August 25, 2018
Jericho Brown is a kickass storyteller, which is why I love his poems and this book so much. Look at this short poem "Lunch", which I'll include here without line breaks:
I can appreciate how tight this story is in prose. It's three sentences, with exposition, tension, character development, a climax, and a sort of resolution. And it's all silent! Everything is conveyed through looks and body language and inference and spot-on details like the penny. I heard the poet read this in Houston a year or two before the book came out, and I've remembered it vividly since.
And of course, the lineated version is even better; there's a genius line break between faggots and too, for instance. The craft always seems to be in service to the story.
There are more lyrical poems in the book, and narratives more involved than "Lunch," but it's all really, really good. Read it!
In a fast-food line, one man pulls a penny from another man's hand, grins too wide a grin, and pays the extra change. The boy standing behind the register takes my jealous stare for one of disapproval and shakes his head at me to say, I hate faggots too. Carefully shifting my weight onto one skinny leg, I open my appropriate mouth to order.
I can appreciate how tight this story is in prose. It's three sentences, with exposition, tension, character development, a climax, and a sort of resolution. And it's all silent! Everything is conveyed through looks and body language and inference and spot-on details like the penny. I heard the poet read this in Houston a year or two before the book came out, and I've remembered it vividly since.
And of course, the lineated version is even better; there's a genius line break between faggots and too, for instance. The craft always seems to be in service to the story.
There are more lyrical poems in the book, and narratives more involved than "Lunch," but it's all really, really good. Read it!
February 2, 2009
“If the red sun rising makes a sound, / Let my voice be that sound.”
Jericho Brown's voice is a whip. A deft delivery of poetry, Please is smart, sad, beautiful, musical. I love the way in which the Tracks organize the book and music informs the poems. Song of absence. Man as song. Music as love. So many moments of inspired connection feel like keys turning. Rich full-circle gestures, fascinating lines drawn. I admire the original, organic synchronicity of the persona poems.
In general, these poems are no doubt delivered straight from the soul. Each reading feels like two. ("Like Father!") Some poems that had an especially profound impact:
"Again," "Pause," "Idea for an Album: Vandross, the Duets," "Turning 26," "I Have Just Picked Up a Man," "Lion," "Betty Jo Jackson," "Dark Side of the Planet," "Runaway."
"Track 8: Song for You" made me cry. "Prayer of the Backhanded" is my favorite. I suspect it will resonate with me always.
December 31, 2011
Absolutely excellent poetry. There's something about the rhythm and lyricism of each of the poems that just makes them come alive. You never really know where each one is headed, and it's great to read them over and over, while still being able to pick up new things. A lot of the poems are persona poems, so it's helpful to have a basic understanding of who the speaker is each piece (there's a short reference guide in the back to help with this). As it says on the back of the book, the work is mainly about the history and culture that has surrounded the African American male, but you don't need to be either of these things to enjoy Please. Themes of love, violence, depression, loss, and happiness, speak to everyone.
I was fortunate enough to have Brown come to my class and do a reading, which really helped bring the poetry to life. There are some readings on YouTube which I recommend listening to as you read through this excellent collection. Highly recommended!
I was fortunate enough to have Brown come to my class and do a reading, which really helped bring the poetry to life. There are some readings on YouTube which I recommend listening to as you read through this excellent collection. Highly recommended!
June 15, 2011
Jericho Brown’s poetry collection Please is organized into four sections: Repeat, Pause, Power and Stop. Brown continues the musical theme throughout a cycle of poems whose titles are all numbered tracks and whose content references song lyrics. Other poems refer to characters from The Wizard of Oz and slide fluidly between elevated verse and rhythmic slang. These devices serve as entry points for Brown’s intimate explorations of love, violence, and the lines where they intersect. Sometimes those lines fall between lovers, sometimes between father and son, sometimes within crime-ridden neighborhoods. All of them result in verse as immediate as it is well-crafted, strung with such arresting lines as these from “The Burning Bush:” “Remember me for this sprouting fire…/No ash behind, I burn to bloom. / I am not consumed. I am not consumed.”
August 18, 2013
This book shared a lot of resonating themes with another book I recently read (also published in 2008): James Allen Hall's Now You're the Enemy. This made me think about the effect of braiding in a poetry collection; pulsing back to topics and images to weave a story rather than marching through it chronologically. It's a skill I need to practice. These poems are tightly wound narratives with strong images and details that do so much work. Here are some of my favorite moments from the book:
"She does not mean to entertain
You, and neither do I."
"And forgive my forgetting
the love of a hand."
"What must this field
feel for the plow?"
"How to shake the night's hand in confidence.
How to trust that no star will talk?"
"A rubber band binds the morning paper."
"She does not mean to entertain
You, and neither do I."
"And forgive my forgetting
the love of a hand."
"What must this field
feel for the plow?"
"How to shake the night's hand in confidence.
How to trust that no star will talk?"
"A rubber band binds the morning paper."
January 3, 2019
I’ll never forget the first time I read “Host” in Poetry Foundation. Jericho Brown became my favorite poet from this century. The way he chains his verses, keeps you reading and finding new meaning over and over again, making his work a wonderful—yet terribly sad—garden of roses that keeps revealing new shapes every time you approach it. “Please” compiles another set of poems and songs that continue to display this mastery of language, while addressing topics such as family and homosexuality. And while I’m yet to find a poem that truly equals the power of “Host”, at least for me, most of the poems here resonated with me, and I’m sure that I’m yet to find a lot more beauty and darkness hidden within those poems.
January 26, 2014
Really fresh. Although the poems feel plainspoken and direct, Jericho Brown is okay with being occasionally oblique. While he retells stories of his hardworking family, his tough-loving parents, and an uneasy childhood--he also mixes in some sly commentary on the act of telling: "I should have told you this / Lines ago" ("Again"). My favorites are the poems for partners and lovers, which seem to me as if they tread new ground in gay poetry, because they are romantic and sexy but not campy, outrageous, or provocative. Maybe we've finally arrived at a poetry that presents sexuality for what it is, without excuse, exaggeration, or apology.
May 3, 2020
Track 4: Reflection
As performed by Diana Ross
I wanted to reflect the sun.
I wore what glitters, smiled,
Left my eyes open, and,
On the ceiling of my mouth,
Balanced a note as long as God allowed,
My head tilted backwards, my arms stretched
Out and up, I kept praying,
If the red sun rising makes a sound,
Let my voice be that sound.
I could hear the sun sing in 1968.
I learned the word assassin
And watched cities burn.
Got another #1 and somebody
Set Detroit on fire. That was power—
White folks looking at me
Directly and going blind
So they wouldn’t have to see
What in the world was burning black.
As performed by Diana Ross
I wanted to reflect the sun.
I wore what glitters, smiled,
Left my eyes open, and,
On the ceiling of my mouth,
Balanced a note as long as God allowed,
My head tilted backwards, my arms stretched
Out and up, I kept praying,
If the red sun rising makes a sound,
Let my voice be that sound.
I could hear the sun sing in 1968.
I learned the word assassin
And watched cities burn.
Got another #1 and somebody
Set Detroit on fire. That was power—
White folks looking at me
Directly and going blind
So they wouldn’t have to see
What in the world was burning black.
February 11, 2016
You would not believe me if I told you/
I met a man called Joshua./ I am not a city nor a saint./
He knew where my body had been.
This book is worth reading for "Burning Bush" alone, but there's so much texture to this book throughout. (I lowkey worried Jericho Brown needs/needed more healthy, loving relationships but I'm not this man, soooo... ). My favorites:
+ Prayer of the Backhanded
+ Scarecrow
+ Pause
+ Fall
+ The Burning Bush
+ Betty Jo Jackson
+ Dark Side of the Planet
+ David
+ The Gulf
+ Track 8: Song for You
I met a man called Joshua./ I am not a city nor a saint./
He knew where my body had been.
This book is worth reading for "Burning Bush" alone, but there's so much texture to this book throughout. (I lowkey worried Jericho Brown needs/needed more healthy, loving relationships but I'm not this man, soooo... ). My favorites:
+ Prayer of the Backhanded
+ Scarecrow
+ Pause
+ Fall
+ The Burning Bush
+ Betty Jo Jackson
+ Dark Side of the Planet
+ David
+ The Gulf
+ Track 8: Song for You
October 7, 2014
I fluctuate between three and four stars; there are a number of poems in which I have no contextual foundation for understanding, but there are a few poems (Detailing the Nape and Prayer of the Backhanded) are absolutely tour de forces of poetic expression. I've had the pleasure of listening to Brown read his work--and talk with him personally--and I'd highly recommend, when he comes to your town or a reading: GO. SEE. HIM.
March 21, 2020
Having read The Tradition, I felt the need to read this early work by Jericho Brown, and can see the thread that carries through his work. This book felt more personal, more raw. I love music and loved the references and structure of this book. The poems hit just as hard, but this time carry a different weight, the weight of family issues, relationship issues, and the music that plays in the background of our lives.
March 7, 2014
A testament to the innovative and exploratory writers. Exploring his homosexuality, his race, family relationships, Brown delves into the dark side of humanity, attempting to find understanding and peace.
Especially loved the poem "Tin Man." So many different ways to read it, none of them being the "right" way--endless interpretations!
Especially loved the poem "Tin Man." So many different ways to read it, none of them being the "right" way--endless interpretations!
May 18, 2018
Jericho recently talked about the need for readers to write reviews, and I don't often remember to post reviews of poetry books, so that was a helpful nudge.
This volume grabs you by the throat and places a hand on your chest to feel your beating heart. LISTEN, this book says. Read the poems aloud to yourself, feel their syncopated eroticism, take a deep breath.
This volume grabs you by the throat and places a hand on your chest to feel your beating heart. LISTEN, this book says. Read the poems aloud to yourself, feel their syncopated eroticism, take a deep breath.
October 21, 2019
I really enjoyed this collection. It was beautiful, uncomfortable and raw. It was such a powerful book of poetry. The references to the Wizard of Oz were super interesting with the way he used it. I constantly think about the line, "I wish you had asthma" which is just so brutal but impactful. I could not recommend this poet enough.
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