Please (First Book)
by Jericho Brown
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Please explores the points in our lives at which love and violence intersect. Drunk on its own rhythms and full of imaginative and often frightening imagery, Please is the album playing in the background of the history and culture that surround African American/male identity and sexuality. Just as radio favorites like Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway, and Pink Floyd characterize loss, loneliness, addiction, and denial with their voices, these poems chorus of speakers transform moments of intimacy show more and humor into spontaneous music. In PLEASE, Jericho Brown sings the influence soul culture has on American life with the accuracy of the blues. "In a powerful debut suffused with a sense of music, a Cave Canem winner who has served as speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans captures painful private moments as well as bittersweet triumph."--Library Journal Reviews. show lessTags
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I read Brown's first book soon after finishing his sophomore collection, The New Testament. While this isn't quite as strong as its follow-up, it still interrogates themes of blackness, and masculinity, gender, and male love with poems that deliver powerful images and inventive wordplay. With each book, Brown digs deeper and more fearlessly into notions of identity. Start here, and if you like even just a little what you read, you will be blown away by the second book. I wait with bated breath for his third collection.
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6+ Works 941 Members
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- Reviews
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- Languages
- English, Spanish
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