Overview
The Tradition by Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press, 2019) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2020 — a recognition that felt both overdue and entirely fitting. Brown had been one of American poetry's most distinctive voices for over a decade, and this collection, his third, represents a culmination of everything that makes his work so extraordinary: formal inventiveness, unflinching subject matter, and a lyric intensity that leaves you breathless.
The Duplex: A New Form for an Old Violence
One of the most talked-about aspects of The Tradition is Brown's invention of a new poetic form: the duplex. A hybrid of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues, the duplex is a 14-line poem in which the second line of each couplet becomes (in altered form) the first line of the next. The effect is hypnotic and disorienting — a formal enactment of the way trauma loops and returns, shifts and persists.
The first poem in the collection to use this form, simply titled "Duplex," sets the tone immediately. It is a poem about love and violence living in the same body, the same relationship — and the form itself makes that coexistence structurally visible. This is form as argument, and it is brilliant.
What the Collection Is About
It would be reductive to summarise The Tradition as "a book about race" or "a book about queerness," though both are central. More precisely, it is a book about what it costs to be a Black, queer man in America — the ways violence is both external (police brutality, systemic racism) and intimate (the violence within relationships, within the self). Brown refuses to separate these registers. The personal and the political breathe together here, inseparably.
The collection opens with a poem about a garden — flowers with beautiful names that also happen to be the names of Black men killed by police. The juxtaposition is devastating and precise. Brown understands how beauty and horror cohabit, and he returns to that understanding throughout the book.
Language and Craft
Brown's language is both sensuous and surgical. He has an extraordinary ear — his lines carry musical weight without ever feeling laboured. He draws on the blues tradition, on classical forms, and on the vernacular of everyday Black American speech, moving between registers with complete fluency.
Consider his use of the body throughout the collection: Brown returns again and again to flesh, skin, wounds, and pleasure. The body in these poems is a contested site — desired, endangered, celebrated, mourned. This bodily focus gives the work an immediacy that purely abstract political poetry often lacks.
Strengths and a Few Notes
| Strength | Notes for Some Readers |
|---|---|
| Formally inventive — the duplex alone earns its place in the canon | The density of some poems may require re-reading |
| Unflinching emotional honesty | Content around violence and trauma is intense |
| Rich intertextual dialogue with tradition | Some allusions reward prior reading of poetic history |
| Extraordinarily musical language | Best experienced read aloud, at least in part |
Who Should Read This Collection?
Anyone interested in where contemporary poetry is going. The Tradition is not a comfortable read — Brown doesn't want you comfortable — but it is a rewarding one. It asks you to sit with difficulty, with beauty, with contradiction, and to emerge from that sitting changed in some small but real way.
For readers new to Brown, this is an ideal starting point. For those who know his earlier work (Please and New Testament), it represents a remarkable deepening of a vision that was always ambitious and always honest.
Verdict
The Tradition is essential reading — a collection that expands what poetry can do and reminds us why it matters. Highly recommended.