Poetry. African American Studies. LGBT Studies. 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 and humor into spontaneous music. In PLEASE, Jericho Brown sings the influence soul culture has on American life with the accuracy of the blues.

About the author: Jericho Brown worked as the speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before receiving his PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. He also holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans and a BA from Dillard University. The recipient of a Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University and two travel fellowships to the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, he has served as poetry editor at Gulf Coast and assistant poetry editor at Callaloo. His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, jubilat, New England Review, Oxford American, and several other journals and anthologies. Brown teaches creative writing as an Assistant Professor of English at the University of San Diego. New Issues Poetry & Prose published his first book PLEASE.

Reviews:
http://www.radioopensource.org/whose-words-these-are-5-jericho-brown/
http://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poetry/crossroads/new_american_poets/jericho_brown/
http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/SMALL_PRESS_SPOTLIGHT_JERICHO_BROWN/
DIAGRAM
http://www.newpages.com/bookreviews/2009_2/february2009_book_reviews.htm#please
http://corduroybooks.wordpress.com/2008/11/05/jericho-brown/
http://immunizationagainstinvisibility.blogspot.com/2008/10/please-that-sounds-like-music-from.html
http://www.barrelhousemag.com/growler//Reviews/Please.htm