The Tradition

"We do not know the history of this nation in ourselves, we don't know the history of ourselves on this planet, because we don't know what we believe we own."

I felt that this was very well written, but, if I'm being honest, poetry is just lost on me 😅 I won't rate this for that reason, but the audiobook was well read.

3.5⭐

"Candles are romantic because we understand shadows" This line taken from one of the poems called Trojan in the collection. Poetry has been a strong part of my life. When I was a kid and a teenager I used to write poems myself. I picked up that habit this year and made myself a goal to include more poetry in my TBR. Brown's collection explores topics such as rape, racism on the Black community and the murders of Black people by the police. I did struggle to understand some poems but I know you can give your own interpretation to the poems or even if you understand one line that you do enjoy in poetry I believe it's a succeful attempt on reading poetry.

Oof this one is like a punch to the gut. Highly recommend.

This was a brilliant collection of many beautiful poems. I'm not sure how many will stick with me, and some of them were a bit of a miss on the structure personally. But every word Jericho Brown chooses is so perfectly picked, creating a gorgeous (and often tragic) image which reflects back reality. I would definitely recommend this collection. 3.5~

Poetry isn't usually my thing, but I enjoyed reading most of these poems, from a linguistic perspetive and I also felt that I gained some emotional value from them, even though I don't particularly "relate" to the author's experiences.