[p. 2 of 3]

[Brown continues]... write any certain way or drink at some certain bar or live in some certain part of the country.

AGB: You mention your move to California, where you spent five years teaching creative writing at the University of San Diego. I am reminded of the poem "Receiving Line," set and presumably written in California in 2008. In it, you write, "My name is Jericho Brown and / I am in unlegislated love with a man bound / To grab for me when he sleeps." Of course, 2008 was the year of when a famously high black voter turnout helped propel Obama to the presidency. It also aided in passing Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state. What was it like living there at that time? What did those events mean to you?

JB: I wrote that poem for an anthology edited by Sonia Sanchez, Lita Hooper (an Atlanta poet and very old friend), and Michael Simanga called 44 on 44: Forty-four African American Writers on the Election of the Forty-fourth President of the United States. I never take on anthology assignments because I don't think it bodes well for good writing from me, but in this case I thought no one in the book might have the chance to say something as conflicted as I felt in that moment. It seemed necessary for me to make sure this other thought was represented because I was pretty sure I wasn't the only one having that thought.

Mind you, I don't think black people hate gay people any more or less than anyone else hates gay people. . . including gay people themselves. Still, the pain for me as a black gay man when I'm faced with hatred from black people does sting more than it does when anyone else bothers to make clear their hatred.

AGB: It felt like to me like the book was, in some ways, a reclamation of the church and religion that you were raised with. I love that your poem "The Ten Commandments," for instance, is about a man coveting someone else's husband instead of wife.

JB: Yes, that was part of the point. I always want to work with and work out whatever is racking my brain. I've learned now that many people feel exiled from the church and can use the poems to represent that feeling, or can use the poems to reclaim their faith. But it's very important to me that the poems start with me and not from outside of myself, not from a place of attempting to stand for anyone. I want the poems to do that, but not while I'm writing them. While I'm writing them, I just want to feel like I'm up to something worthwhile because of the music the work makes in my mind while I'm putting it on the page.

AGB: You said to me something recently about The New Testament that was very interesting—you said, "All of the poems die young." Of course, not just the poems but the characters, too. The poem "What the Holy Do" is dedicated to Previn Keith Butler (1978 – 2009), "another poorly recorded life, " you write, that terminated too soon. Who was Previn Keith Butler? Who was Messiah Demery, the man to whom the book is dedicated and who appears in the poem "Found: Messiah" with a bullet in his chest? Or Dwayne Betts, who, in the poem "Hustle," you write, "deserves more than this dry ink for his teenage years in prison." I've Googled these names and I know they are all real people. How important are they to you?

JB: Previn was a fraternity brother and good friend of mine from my undergrad years at Dillard University. Before he died, he and I spent a lot of time talking about how to go about thinking for ourselves and to create the lives we wanted to live. We both had a love/hate relationship with tradition. I think he was incapable of guilt, though he often felt shame. I still think of him as one of the smartest people I ever met. I might cry typing this. I spent a lot of time in my life envious of his willingness to do whatever the hell he wanted and afraid for him because of that willingness. When he told me he was going to try porn, I believed him and acted like I didn't. Then I saw it for myself just a few weeks before I got word that he was gone.

Messiah was my cousin. He's probably the real reason why the book is titled The New Testament. I didn't know anyone could name a child "Messiah" until my aunt did it. He and my sister were best friends growing up. He was something of a badass, though, and stayed in the kinds of trouble folks love to associate with young black men. He was funny and determined and a great dominoes player. . . as in, great at cheating. Some of his first words were cuss words, and I still wish I could make my cussing work as effortlessly as he did. For a while, he lived with us, making my sister the happiest little girl in the world. I knew he was special because my mother would cry when she had to whup him (had to?). That woman never cried when she whupped me. After his baptism, when everyone in the church came to hug and congratulate him, he embraced them and patted them on the back, and as if he was comforting them, said "everything is going to be okay." Strangest thing.

Dwayne Betts is a poet the country tried to kill, but he's a survivor. We agree to disagree. He's in law school now and has a son he loves more than anything on this planet.

I always wanted to write a book about black men, so I did. I figure with as much as I love them and to be looked at by them, it makes sense for me to write about them if I'm going to be calling myself a poet.

AGB: You seem to feel fraternally towards these men. And there is the important character of the speaker's brother who recurs throughout the book. Eventually, we learn that his girlfriend Angel has killed him in a

[continues...]