October 22, 2025 - English Studies

“The Tradition” by Jericho Brown: A Critical Analysis

Introduction: “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown

“The Tradition” by Jericho Brown first appeared in his 2019 Pulitzer Prize–winning collection The Tradition (Copper Canyon Press, 2019). The poem explores the violent legacy of racism in America through a juxtaposition of natural imagery and human brutality. Brown lists flowers—“Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium.”—as symbols of cultivation and beauty, only to end with the names of Black men killed by police: “John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.” This stark contrast exposes how violence against Black bodies has become part of America’s “tradition.” The poem’s power lies in its layered irony: “We thought / Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt,” a line suggesting both belonging and the illusion of ownership in a land tainted by systemic injustice. Brown’s blending of pastoral imagery with news-report diction (“the sun, which news reports claimed flamed hotter”) bridges personal grief and collective trauma. Its popularity stems from this fusion of lyric beauty and political urgency—transforming mourning into resistance and reaffirming art’s role in naming the dead and reclaiming dignity.

Text: “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown

Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium. We thought

Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt, learning

Names in heat, in elements classical

Philosophers said could change us. Star Gazer.

Foxglove. Summer seemed to bloom against the will

Of the sun, which news reports claimed flamed hotter

On this planet than when our dead fathers

Wiped sweat from their necks. Cosmos. Baby’s Breath.

Men like me and my brothers filmed what we

Planted for proof we existed before

Too late, sped the video to see blossoms

Brought in seconds, colors you expect in poems

Where the world ends, everything cut down.

John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.

Annotations: “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown

Line(s)	Annotation	Literary Devices
1. “Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium.”	The poem opens by naming flowers, suggesting beauty, growth, and natural life. These flowers symbolize cultural or human cultivation — a peaceful image that contrasts with later violence.	Imagery, Symbolism, Asyndeton, Juxtaposition
2. “We thought / Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt,”	The speaker reflects on the belief that working the soil gives ownership or belonging. It implies false security — that touching the land makes it theirs, despite historical dispossession.	Irony, Symbolism, Enjambment, Metaphor
3. “learning / Names in heat, in elements classical / Philosophers said could change us.”	Refers to learning the names of flowers in the heat and under natural elements (earth, air, fire, water), which ancient philosophers believed shaped human character. It connects nature and transformation.	Allusion (to classical philosophy), Imagery, Enjambment
4. “Star Gazer.”	Another flower name, also hinting at aspiration and hope—looking upward amid struggle.	Symbolism, Irony (hope amid tragedy)
5. “Foxglove.”	A flower both beautiful and poisonous—symbolizing duality: beauty intertwined with danger or death.	Symbolism, Irony, Juxtaposition
6–7. “Summer seemed to bloom against the will / Of the sun, which news reports claimed flamed hotter”	The season of growth (“summer”) appears to resist the harshness of the sun—an image of survival amid worsening global and social climates. The reference to “news reports” grounds the poem in modern reality.	Personification, Imagery, Irony, Juxtaposition
8–9. “On this planet than when our dead fathers / Wiped sweat from their necks.”	A generational link—past struggles of Black ancestors under heat and labor (possibly slavery or oppression). The “dead fathers” suggest inherited trauma and resilience.	Allusion, Symbolism, Enjambment, Historical reference
10. “Cosmos. Baby’s Breath.”	Two more flowers symbolizing order (“Cosmos”) and innocence (“Baby’s Breath”). The use of floral names continues the motif of life, purity, and fragility before the tragic turn.	Symbolism, Imagery, Contrast
11–12. “Men like me and my brothers filmed what we / Planted for proof we existed before”	The speaker notes documenting their existence through planting and filming—an act of asserting identity and presence in a world that erases Black lives.	Irony, Symbolism, Alliteration (“proof we planted”), Enjambment
13. “Too late, sped the video to see blossoms”	“Too late” suggests mortality—perhaps death before recognition. Speeding the video mimics the fast-forwarding of life and the fleeting nature of beauty or life itself.	Irony, Symbolism, Metaphor
14–15. “Brought in seconds, colors you expect in poems / Where the world ends, everything cut down.”	The poem’s tone darkens: beauty appears just before destruction, “colors you expect in poems / Where the world ends.” It signals apocalyptic violence—beauty preceding tragedy.	Imagery, Foreshadowing, Irony, Enjambment
16. “John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.”	The final line abruptly shifts to the names of real Black men killed by police violence in the U.S. The flowers’ names are replaced by names of victims, equating human lives with cut-down blossoms. This direct naming transforms grief into protest.	Allusion (to real victims), Juxtaposition, Anaphora (repetition of structure), Symbolism, Irony, Tone shift

Literary And Poetic Devices: “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown

🌸 Device	Definition	Example from “The Tradition”	Detailed Explanation
🌸 Allusion	A reference to a person, place, event, or literary work.	“John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.”	Brown alludes to real victims of police brutality, connecting the poem’s natural imagery to historical and political violence against Black men.
🌸 Anaphora	Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses.	Repetition of plant names: “Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium.”	This rhythmic repetition mimics a litany or ritual, sanctifying the act of naming as both remembrance and resistance.
🌸 Assonance	Repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyme.	“Men like me and my brothers filmed what we / Planted for proof…”	The long e and i sounds create musicality and echo familial unity and collective identity.
🌸 Caesura	A deliberate pause or break within a line of poetry.	“John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.”	The full stops fracture the rhythm, imitating the abrupt end of lives and symbolizing systemic interruption of Black existence.
🌸 Consonance	Repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the end of words.	“Cosmos. Baby’s Breath.”	The soft s sound links fragility and serenity, underscoring the delicate boundary between life and loss.
🌸 Contrast	Juxtaposition of opposing ideas to highlight tension.	“Summer seemed to bloom against the will / Of the sun.”	The tension between blooming and burning mirrors resilience amid oppression and environmental decay.
🌸 Diction	The poet’s choice of words to convey tone and mood.	“Names in heat, in elements classical.”	The scholarly diction fuses philosophy and nature, elevating the everyday act of gardening into a metaphor for human transformation.
🌸 Elegiac Tone	A mournful or reflective tone, often used to lament the dead.	The final lines naming slain Black men.	The poem becomes an elegy, blending beauty with grief, as the speaker memorializes lives lost to racial violence.
🌸 Enjambment	The continuation of a sentence beyond the line break.	“Men like me and my brothers filmed what we / Planted for proof we existed…”	The enjambment mirrors continuity of life and struggle, defying structural boundaries just as the community resists erasure.
🌸 Imagery	Descriptive language appealing to the senses.	“Fingers in dirt… sweat from their necks.”	Sensory imagery grounds the poem in the physical, evoking earth, heat, and labor as symbols of survival and connection.
🌸 Irony	Expression of meaning through language that signifies the opposite.	“Summer seemed to bloom against the will / Of the sun.”	The irony lies in the coexistence of life and destruction, suggesting unnatural survival under oppressive conditions.
🌸 Juxtaposition	Placement of contrasting images or ideas side by side.	“Cosmos. Baby’s Breath. / John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.”	The juxtaposition of delicate flowers and murdered men forces a reckoning between natural innocence and societal brutality.
🌸 Metaphor	A figure of speech comparing two unlike things without using “like” or “as.”	“Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt.”	The garden becomes a metaphor for cultural inheritance, ownership, and the reclamation of identity.
🌸 Mood	The emotional atmosphere created by the poem.	The shift from serene blooming to tragic endings.	The mood transitions from pastoral calm to collective mourning, guiding the reader through beauty, memory, and sorrow.
🌸 Personification	Attributing human qualities to non-human entities.	“Summer seemed to bloom against the will / Of the sun.”	Nature is personified to reflect human resistance—summer blooms despite the sun’s oppressive will, mirroring social defiance.
🌸 Repetition	Deliberate recurrence of words or structures for emphasis.	Repeated listing of flower names.	The repetition creates a ritualistic cadence, transforming naming into a sacred act of remembrance and protest.
🌸 Symbolism	Use of symbols to represent deeper meanings.	Flowers like “Aster,” “Foxglove,” and “Cosmos.”	Each flower symbolizes both beauty and fragility—emblems of life’s transience and the cycle of birth, decay, and remembrance.
🌸 Tone	The poet’s attitude toward the subject.	The poem’s shift from reflective to mournful tone.	Brown’s tone evolves from meditative to elegiac, revealing the transformation of cultivation into commemoration.
🌸 Tricolon	A series of three parallel elements for emphasis.	“John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.”	The triple structure creates rhythmic finality, evoking a sacred trinity of remembrance and indictment against racial injustice.

Themes: “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown

1. Nature and Fragility of Life
In “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown, the recurring motif of flowers such as “Aster,” “Nasturtium,” and “Delphinium” evokes the delicate beauty and transience of life. These flowers symbolize both vitality and vulnerability—an allegory for Black existence within a hostile social landscape. Brown writes, “Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt,” expressing the human urge to cultivate, belong, and take root. Yet this illusion of ownership is shattered as the poem progresses, reminding readers that even beauty—like life—can be uprooted by violence. The Aster, traditionally associated with love and remembrance, underscores the theme of fragility, where each bloom becomes an elegy for those who once lived. Through floral imagery, Brown connects human mortality with the natural cycle of growth and decay, turning a garden into a graveyard of memory.

2. Racial Violence and Historical Continuity
In “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown, the poet juxtaposes beauty with brutality to expose the ongoing legacy of racial violence. The line “John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.” transforms the poem’s pastoral calm into a public outcry, connecting the cultivation of flowers with the cultivation of remembrance for slain Black men. The Foxglove, beautiful yet poisonous, symbolizes this paradox—how a nation’s aesthetic ideals coexist with systemic oppression. The repetition of names mimics a litany of the dead, forcing readers to confront how racial injustice has become part of America’s tragic “tradition.” By linking the fertile soil of gardens to blood-soaked ground, Brown reveals the historical continuity between the past (“our dead fathers”) and the present, portraying racism as an inherited disease disguised as heritage.

3. Illusion of Ownership and Identity
In “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown, the motif of soil and planting represents the human desire for identity, belonging, and permanence. The line “Men like me and my brothers filmed what we / Planted for proof we existed” captures a haunting need for validation in a world that erases Black lives. The Cosmos flower—whose name signifies order and harmony—ironically highlights the dissonance between aspiration and reality. Brown’s imagery of men documenting their labor “for proof” underscores the fragility of identity when social systems deny recognition. The illusion that working the land secures belonging reflects centuries of displacement and exclusion, where creation itself becomes an act of resistance. The garden, then, becomes both evidence and memorial—a space where selfhood is rooted only to be uprooted again.

4. Art, Memory, and Resistance
In “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown, art becomes a means of preserving life against erasure. When Brown writes of men who “sped the video to see blossoms / Brought in seconds,” he transforms the act of filming into a metaphor for poetry itself—an accelerated vision that compresses time, beauty, and loss. The Baby’s Breath flower, symbolizing innocence and remembrance, reinforces the poem’s elegiac tone, where art keeps memory alive amid decay. Brown’s fusion of “colors you expect in poems / Where the world ends” suggests that poetry can capture both apocalypse and endurance. Through rhythmic naming and floral symbolism, Brown resists silence, turning mourning into creative defiance. Thus, “The Tradition” becomes both lament and legacy—an act of remembrance that keeps the dead blooming in language.

Literary Theories and “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown

🌿 Literary Theory	Key Concepts	Application to “The Tradition”	Textual Reference & Explanation
🌸 Postcolonial Theory	Explores power, identity, and cultural reclamation after colonization; critiques dominance and marginalization.	Brown reclaims ownership of language and land through naming and cultivation, asserting Black identity against systemic oppression.	“Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt.” → The possessive our resists historical dispossession, reclaiming the earth as symbolic of Black agency and belonging in a colonized world.
🌺 Critical Race Theory (CRT)	Examines how racism is embedded in legal, social, and institutional structures.	The poem connects natural imagery to racialized violence, juxtaposing beauty with brutality to reveal systemic injustice.	“John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.” → These names evoke police killings of unarmed Black men, transforming remembrance into protest and exposing racial trauma within America’s social fabric.
🌻 Ecocriticism	Studies the relationship between literature and the environment; interprets how nature reflects cultural or moral states.	The fusion of floral imagery with human suffering suggests that nature participates in the moral witnessing of racial history.	“Summer seemed to bloom against the will / Of the sun.” → The natural world mirrors resilience, blooming defiantly despite oppressive heat—symbolizing endurance amidst social hostility.
🌼 New Historicism	Analyzes literature as a product of its cultural and historical moment, emphasizing power relations and discourse.	Brown situates contemporary racial violence within historical continuities, using the pastoral form to critique idealized national myths.	“News reports claimed flamed hotter / On this planet than when our dead fathers / Wiped sweat from their necks.” → Historical layering links ancestral labor and modern climate crisis, revealing inherited suffering and systemic continuity.

Critical Questions about “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown

1. How does Jericho Brown use the motif of flowers to comment on beauty, violence, and racial history in “The Tradition”?

In “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown, the repeated naming of flowers—“Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium.”—establishes an unsettling tension between natural beauty and historical violence. Brown transforms these floral images, traditionally associated with life and serenity, into emblems of memorialization for Black lives lost to systemic racism. The line “Men like me and my brothers filmed what we / Planted for proof we existed before / Too late” connects cultivation with survival and documentation, implying that for Black men, existence must be proven before it is erased. The flowers symbolize both the persistence of beauty amid brutality and the fragility of life under racial oppression. By juxtaposing “Cosmos. Baby’s Breath.” with the news reports of a burning planet, Brown indicts a culture that aestheticizes destruction and commodifies Black suffering while ignoring its roots in systemic injustice. Thus, the floral imagery becomes a profound critique of the aestheticization of Black pain in American society.

2. In what ways does “The Tradition” reframe the relationship between masculinity and vulnerability within African American identity?

“The Tradition” by Jericho Brown interrogates the inherited scripts of masculinity imposed on Black men, challenging both societal and cultural constraints. The line “Men like me and my brothers filmed what we / Planted for proof we existed” reveals a desperate need for self-documentation—a refusal to vanish into the silence history imposes on Black male bodies. Here, Brown situates vulnerability as a radical act of self-assertion. The “brothers” embody a collective consciousness, resisting erasure not through aggression but through the act of planting, nurturing, and remembering. This act feminizes strength, transforming care into resistance. Brown’s redefinition of masculinity aligns with his larger poetic project of tenderness as power, echoing his advocacy for Black queer identity. In the poem, the traditional association of masculinity with control is inverted into an ethic of preservation—planting as both love and protest.

3. How does the poem reflect contemporary anxieties about climate, mortality, and generational inheritance?

In “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown, ecological imagery merges with social commentary to highlight a dual crisis—environmental decay and racial violence. The line “Summer seemed to bloom against the will / Of the sun, which news reports claimed flamed hotter / On this planet than when our dead fathers / Wiped sweat from their necks” links climate change to generational memory and mortality. Brown fuses personal lineage with planetary trauma: the sun burns hotter not just physically but metaphorically, symbolizing the intensification of inherited suffering. The “dead fathers” evoke both familial ancestors and the unrecorded victims of historical violence. Through this interplay, Brown situates the poem in a postmodern ecological consciousness where personal grief and global catastrophe intertwine. His meditation on inheritance thus becomes both biological and cultural—a passing down of trauma and responsibility to remember, even as the world itself seems to wither.

4. How does “The Tradition” critique the media’s portrayal of Black suffering and the commodification of trauma?

“The Tradition” by Jericho Brown offers a biting commentary on how media spectatorship turns Black suffering into spectacle. The phrase “Men like me and my brothers filmed what we / Planted for proof we existed before / Too late” echoes the viral circulation of violence against Black bodies in news and social media. Brown uses the act of filming as a metaphor for both empowerment and exploitation—an attempt to bear witness, but also a reflection of how Black existence becomes visible only in death. The poet implicitly critiques the contemporary culture of voyeuristic mourning, where empathy is mediated through consumption. The media’s claim that the sun “flamed hotter / On this planet” further symbolizes a news cycle that sensationalizes catastrophe without accountability. Brown’s critique lies in transforming documentation into an act of reclamation—turning surveillance into self-assertion, and resistance into art.

Literary Works Similar to “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown

“Incident” by Countee Cullen – Similar to “The Tradition” in its portrayal of racial trauma through a deceptively simple narrative, it captures how a single racist act can scar a lifetime, reflecting the enduring impact of America’s racial “tradition.”
“Strange Fruit” by Abel Meeropol (popularized by Billie Holiday) – Like Brown’s poem, it juxtaposes beauty and horror, using natural imagery (“black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze”) to expose racial violence and collective injustice.

“We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar – Shares with “The Tradition” the theme of concealed suffering, where outward civility and beauty hide deep racial pain and historical endurance.
“The Black Walnut Tree” by Mary Oliver – Echoes Brown’s intertwining of nature and inheritance, using the symbol of a tree to explore familial duty, memory, and the cost of preserving one’s roots amid social and personal struggle.

Representative Quotations of “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown

Quotation	Context and Theoretical Perspective
🌸 “Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium.”	These opening words introduce a list of flowers symbolizing beauty, nature, and human cultivation. From an ecocritical perspective, the flowers represent life and renewal, yet their fragility foreshadows destruction and mortality.
🌿 “We thought / Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt”	Brown reflects on the illusion of belonging and ownership. Through a postcolonial lens, this line critiques how marginalized people are denied true ownership of land and identity despite their labor and connection to it.
🔥 “In elements classical / Philosophers said could change us.”	Refers to ancient ideas of transformation through natural elements (earth, air, fire, water). From an intertextual and philosophical perspective, Brown uses this to show how nature was once seen as redemptive, yet it now mirrors human corruption.
🌼 “Summer seemed to bloom against the will / Of the sun”	This ironic contrast suggests resilience in the face of adversity. A Marxist-humanist reading interprets it as defiance against oppressive systems—life thriving even under a hostile environment.
💧 “Which news reports claimed flamed hotter / On this planet than when our dead fathers / Wiped sweat from their necks.”	This connects environmental crisis with generational suffering. From an eco-racial or environmental justice perspective, Brown links climate change to systemic racial exploitation and inherited pain.
🌺 “Men like me and my brothers filmed what we / Planted for proof we existed”	The act of filming becomes an assertion of existence and humanity. A critical race theory perspective sees this as a response to historical erasure—documentation as survival and resistance.
🎥 “Too late, sped the video to see blossoms / Brought in seconds”	Symbolizes the brevity of life and the desire to witness growth before destruction. A temporal or phenomenological reading highlights time’s acceleration in modern violence and memory.
🌻 “Colors you expect in poems / Where the world ends, everything cut down.”	Beauty becomes apocalyptic—flowers bloom in the shadow of death. From a trauma studies perspective, this captures aestheticization of violence and the tension between art and atrocity.
🕊️ “John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.”	The abrupt naming of real victims of police brutality transforms lyric beauty into protest. A socio-political and Black Studies perspective interprets this as reclaiming agency through naming and remembrance.
🌹 “The Tradition.”	The title itself becomes an indictment—a critique of normalized racial violence disguised as heritage. From a cultural and ideological perspective, the poem exposes how oppression is perpetuated through the guise of continuity and civilization.

Day: October 22, 2025

“The Tradition” by Jericho Brown: A Critical Analysis