He’s famous for inventing his own form of poem called the Duplex, and he’s a professor of writing and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia – a mere hour from where I live just south of where his pen graces his pages each day. I own his book The Tradition, but I couldn’t find it anywhere and am grateful that our public library in my small town had a copy. You must check out Jericho Brown, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet who is as real as poets get on a deeply personal level. I’ve written a cento poem using his existing lines from this collection to form a new poem below.
You can read more about Jericho Brown on his website, and here and here.
Two Words
A poem is a gesture toward home
or the woman for whom it was a gift.
None of our fights ended where they began.
Long ago, we used two words.
Lines taken from, in this order: Duplex; After Avery R. Young; Duplex: Cento; The Legend of Big and Fine.
Common Threads 