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Jericho Brown's
The New Testament is a devastating meditation on race, sexuality and contemporary American society by one of most important new voices in US poetry. In poems of great clarity, lyricism and skill, Brown shows us a world where disease runs through the body, violence runs through the neighbourhood, and trauma runs through generations. Here Brown makes brilliant and subversive use of Bible stories to address the gay experience from both a personal and a political perspective.
By refusing to sacrifice nuance, no matter how charged and urgent his subject, Brown is one of the handful of contemporary poets who have found a speech adequate to the complex times in which we live, and a way to express an equivocal hope for the future.
'Brown's is a necessary art . . . To merge the private with the public so seamlessly is an enviable feat'
Antioch Review'To read Jericho Brown's poems is to encounter devastating genius' Claudia Rankine
About the author
Jericho Brown, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, worked as the speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans before earning his PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston. His first book, Please, won the American Book Award. The New Testament was winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry and the Paterson Award for Literary Excellence, 2015. He teaches at Emory University and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Summary
The UK debut of prize-winning American poet Jericho Brown, a devastating meditation on race, sexuality and contemporary American society.
Foreword
The UK debut of prize-winning American poet Jericho Brown, a devastating meditation on race, sexuality and contemporary American society.
Additional text
Brown s is a necessary art in an era that has seen lingering racial conflict and growing acceptance of gays in America, as well as extreme intolerance and homophobia in many countries overseas. These poems work because while they emanate from an intimately personal place, social concerns loom as large as the barber in Bonnat s painting. To merge the private with the public so seamlessly is an enviable feat.
