POEM OF THE DAY: Jericho Brown's "Another Elegy"
For today, one of my favorite poems in Jericho Brown's truly amazing collection The New Testament (I know––bold title, right? But trust me, it earns it). I was trying, just now, to think of a way to describe this book, but was finding it difficult to put words to the intense emotions the poems elicit––sometimes attempting to describe that thing a great piece of writing does to us is a painful experience in itself. And then! I looked down at the back of the book and saw Rae Armantrout's blurb and, because he does it so well, I'm going to let him describe it for us:
"Jericho Brown is as outrageous as John Donne: he takes God for his lover, father, and murdered or murderous brother. He takes America, with its racism, homophobia, war, and reality television and throttles…no, swaddles it in the language of the Bible and the blues. You want to keep reading this book even when it hurts. Like that other new testament, it's about what love can do."
Um, yeah. The book is ambitious. But let me tell you, Brown was right to take the leap.
"Another Elegy"
To believe in God is to love
What none can see. Let a lover go,
Let him walk out with the good
Spoons or die
Without a signature, and so much
Remains for scrubbing, for a polish
Cleaner than devotion. Tonight,
God is one spot, and you,
You must be one blind nun. You
Wipe, you rub, but love won't move.
