{"id":540165,"date":"2010-04-22T15:24:15","date_gmt":"2010-04-22T19:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=44092"},"modified":"2010-04-22T15:24:15","modified_gmt":"2010-04-22T19:24:15","slug":"a-church-of-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/540165","title":{"rendered":"A church of words"},"content":{"rendered":"

Call him a preacher, a soothsayer, a shaman, a poet. It\u2019s the last that Jericho Brown<\/a> goes by, but it takes all of the above to write lines like \u201cThe loneliest people have the earth to love and not one friend their own age\u201d (from \u201cOdd Jobs\u201d).<\/p>\n

Brown, the Radcliffe Institute<\/a>\u2019s 2009-10 American Fellow<\/a>, read Wednesday (April 21) inside the Radcliffe Gymnasium from \u201cThe New Testament,\u201d his newest collection of poems.<\/p>\n

Born to a New Orleans churchgoing family, Brown read with the breathless urgency of a reverend to a hoard of sinners. Before launching into \u201cAnother Elegy,\u201d his opening poem, Brown\u2019s command over the audience was palpable. Lapsing into a silence so long it might otherwise be deemed uncomfortable, Brown could\u2019ve predicted the world\u2019s end and no one would\u2019ve budged.<\/p>\n

Instead he spoke: \u201cExpect death in all our poems. Men die. Death is not a metaphor. It stands for nothing and represents itself. \u2026 It enters whether or not your house is dirty. Whether or not your body is clean.\u201d<\/p>\n

In \u201cThe New Testament,\u201d Brown mashes up religion, mixing identity, sexuality, violence, race, death, and more death. \u201cThe Bible is a text to go back to,\u201d said Brown, \u201cjust like \u2018The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock\u2019 is a text to go back to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both texts are soaked with death; yet as bleak as Brown\u2019s poems can sometimes be, his performance of them \u2014 though never shy in intensity \u2014 is a catharsis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was raised in a church where part of growing up was about getting in front of people and doing what we saw our pastor doing every Sunday,\u201d he recalled. \u201cYou have to be able to give over to an audience for them to enjoy it. So I think that\u2019s ingrained in me, no matter what I\u2019m doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In \u201cAnother Elegy<\/a>,\u201d a different poem with the same title, Brown read: \u201cEvery night, \/ I take a pill. Miss one, and I\u2019m gone. \/ Miss two, and we\u2019re through. Hotels \/ Bore me, unless I get a mountain view, \/ A room in which my cell won\u2019t work, \/ And there\u2019s nothing to do but see \/ The sun go down into the ground \/ That cradles us as any coffin can.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think of every poem as its own character, so I do my best to embody that character,\u201d said Brown, who won the prestigious Whiting Award while at Radcliffe. The coveted honor, which carries a $50,000 prize, is given to writers in the early stages of their careers who show extraordinary talent and promise. Brown is author of the book \u201cPlease\u201d (New Issues, 2008), and teaches at the University of San Diego.<\/p>\n

In \u201cTo Be Seen<\/a>,\u201d Brown read: \u201cYou will forgive me if I carry the tone of a preacher, \/ Surely, you understand, a man in the midst of dying \/ Must have a point, which is not to say that I am dying \/ Exactly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, Brown had a life-changing revelation: \u201cI became very afraid that I was going to die. For the first time in my life, I was thinking, \u2018Oh, I might die?\u2019 It had never crossed my mind before. It\u2019s that feeling you have when you almost hit a car, that shaking inside, and I was having that feeling all day, every day, that shaking inside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown handled those thoughts by writing. \u201cI felt like I could deal with that feeling if I wrote about that feeling,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo Be Seen\u201d takes its title from a doctor\u2019s appointment (\u201cthe doctor will see you now\u201d), and in the poem Brown confronts disease, mortality, the doctor he does not trust:<\/p>\n

My doctor, for instance, insists on the metaphor of war;<\/p>\n

It’s always the virus that attacks and the cells that fight or<\/p>\n

Die fighting.\u00a0 I even remember him saying the word siege<\/p>\n

When another rash returned.\u00a0 Here I am dying<\/p>\n

While he makes a battle of my body\u00a0\u2014 anything to be seen<\/p>\n

When all he really means is to grab me by the chin<\/p>\n

And, like God the Father, say through clenched teeth,<\/p>\n

Look at me when I’m talking to you.\u00a0 Your healing is<\/p>\n

Not in my hands, though I touch as if to make you whole.<\/p>\n

Noting the lack of joy in his poems, Brown called himself an elegiac poet, but admitted he is really a happy person. \u201cMaybe the joy hasn\u2019t gotten into my writing just yet,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it will.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Call him a preacher, a soothsayer, a shaman, a poet. It\u2019s the last that Jericho Brown goes by, but it takes all of the above to write lines like \u201cThe loneliest people have the earth to love and not one friend their own age\u201d (from \u201cOdd Jobs\u201d). Brown, the Radcliffe Institute\u2019s 2009-10 American Fellow, read […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-540165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}