Jericho Brown and the Quiet Power of the Poem

DION Staff Reports

Jericho Brown has never needed poetry to utter in order for it to be heard. His work arrives softly, deliberately—then stays, doing its work long after the final line. 

A Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, MacArthur Fellow, and one of the most influential literary voices of his generation, Brown approaches poetry the way some people approach music: not as something to be solved, but something to be felt.

As a child, Brown was drawn to poems for a simple reason—they were short. Their brevity offered a sense of accomplishment, a way into books that didn’t feel overwhelming. Meaning came later. “I didn’t really understand what those poems were about,” he says, “but I enjoyed them the same way you enjoy a song you hear for the first time.” The feeling mattered more than the explanation. Even then, poetry was already shaping him in ways he couldn’t yet name.

Like most people, Brown tried his hand at writing poems early on. He sees this impulse as nearly universal, pointing to children crafting rhymes for Valentine’s Day cards or the global reach of hip-hop as proof that people are constantly testing their voices. Poetry, in that sense, is less a rare talent than a natural human instinct—a way of reaching toward meaning, rhythm, and truth.

Among the poets who first guided him were Langston Hughes and Emily Dickinson, whose shorter poems still resonate deeply. Hughes offered clarity and musicality; Dickinson, a sense of mystery. “Not secrets. Not puzzles,” Brown says. “Mysteries meant to be unwound.” Later in life, Lucille Clifton and Louise Glück became lasting influences—writers whose restraint and emotional precision mirrored what Brown himself was beginning to pursue on the page.

For Brown, poetry was never a side passion squeezed around a practical career. If anything, he sees it the other way around. “Actual poets generally think the 9-to-5 job is the side gig,” he says. His path unfolded through education—degrees, workshops, classrooms—until he earned a PhD and began teaching. For more than two decades now, Brown has taught poetry at universities, including his current role as director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta. Studying poetry, he notes, has never stopped.

Brown’s work is perhaps best known for its formal innovation, particularly the creation of the duplex, a poetic form he introduced in his Pulitzer Prize–winning 2019 collection, The Tradition. Blending elements of the sonnet, ghazal, and blues, the duplex uses repetition and variation in a way that feels strikingly musical—echoing jazz improvisation. Lines recur, shift, and return, mirroring the way memory, trauma, love, and identity move through the body. Like jazz, the form honors tradition while insisting on change.

This musicality is no accident. Brown’s poetry lives in the same lineage as jazz, Motown and Hip Hop: deeply rooted in Black history, emotionally expansive, and unafraid of vulnerability. 

His poems speak candidly about love—filial, erotic, communal—and about survival. When asked what Black love means to him, Brown answers simply: recognition. “Recognition from one Black person to another that we have survived.”

That sense of survival—and connection—feels especially vital in turbulent times. Brown believes community is built through truth-telling. “The only way to find out what you don’t know is through someone who is willing to tell the truth,” he says. When truth-tellers gather, history shifts.

In 2024, Brown received the MacArthur Fellowship, the prestigious “genius grant” awarded to individuals demonstrating extraordinary creativity. He learned the news while driving home from the doctor’s office, under the weather—until the call changed everything. The recognition joined an already remarkable list of honors, but it didn’t alter his essential belief in poetry’s quiet power.

Brown often compares poems to trees—frequently overlooked, deeply necessary. We don’t notice how much they sustain us until we imagine a world without them. Poetry, like trees, works invisibly, reshaping our inner landscapes.

And as Black History Month continues to unfold, Brown remains open to discovery. Each year, he says, he learns something new about the resilience and glory of Black people. His poems ensure that we do, too—line by line, breath by breath.