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jaymoran's review against another edition
5.0
One of the best poetry collections I've ever read, Jericho Brown is a wonderful voice that I am so excited about. Discussing race, religion, sexuality, and gender, The New Testament is a stunning piece that I can't say anything about without getting highly emotional. Please just read it. Jericho Brown is a poetic genius--what more can I say? Favourite poems include Coliseum, Willing to Pay, To Be Seen, Paradise and Labor. It's just something else.
rhonaindabooks's review
challenging
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
3.0
I the metre in this poetry just stunning. The imagery and themes were fascinating to untangle- this may be just me being stupid but I found it a little confusing in parts, I think because of the biblical connotations that went over my head. Beautiful poetry overall- loved ‘Romans 1:2’, ‘colosseum’ and ‘multiple choice’ wonderful but heartbreaking.
drekklin's review against another edition
5.0
What a sensational poet. I’ve now read The Tradition and this book, and I’d be thrilled to read more. Can I explain Jericho Brown’s poetry well? Absolutely not. Just go read it.
callum_mclaughlin's review
4.0
The New Testament features one of the best opening poems I’ve encountered in a collection. It was the strength of this alone that convinced me to pick up the book, and though none of the other poems quite reached the dizzy heights of the first, I’m delighted to have discovered Brown’s work. Drawing on mythology, fairy tales, and Bible stories to comment on queerness, race, masculinity, and family, Brown’s use of language and imagery is bold and evocative. The poems I connected with on a personal level hit me in the gut, whilst others engaged in a deeply human, empathetic, and enlightening way. To create poems that lay bare raw emotion and individual experience, and yet provoke such social and political resonance is a real skill, but Brown pulls it off here with aplomb.
moosegurl's review
4.0
"Loneliness
Is a practice. Like medicine."
"Nobody in this nation feels safe, and I'm still a reason why."
"Nothing we erect is our own."
"I eat with humans who think any book full of black characters is about race."
"Once, long ago, in a land I cannot name,
My love and my brother both knocked
At my door like wind in an early winter."
"And this is North America, for God's sake, treat
Me like it, like I looked at you that able way
You look at women to prove yourselves straight."
" ... I live
With a disease instead
Of a lover. We take turns
Doing bad things
To my body ..."
Is a practice. Like medicine."
"Nobody in this nation feels safe, and I'm still a reason why."
"Nothing we erect is our own."
"I eat with humans who think any book full of black characters is about race."
"Once, long ago, in a land I cannot name,
My love and my brother both knocked
At my door like wind in an early winter."
"And this is North America, for God's sake, treat
Me like it, like I looked at you that able way
You look at women to prove yourselves straight."
" ... I live
With a disease instead
Of a lover. We take turns
Doing bad things
To my body ..."
wcsheffer's review
4.0
Interesting juxtaposition of the author's life with the New Testament. Moving and beautiful prose. I know that I would have enjoyed it much more if I new anything about the New Testament (thanks godless New England upbringing). Jericho Brown is a talented poet whose phrasing and subject matter, abstract at times, deliver moving thoughts on the black experience in America. This work features some brilliant poems on queerness and blackness too.