Log0035 | Jericho Brown

I glimpsed him briefly before the reading, chatting to the event organizers, laughing.

My wife invited me to the reading on campus, I was glad I came.

Midway through the reading Jericho explained an encounter on a flight he had taken recently (perhaps his flight here, I cannot recall). The explanation was short, but said it all.

The man sitting next to him broke the silence:

“What do you do?”

“I’m a poet”

“I hate poetry…
it’s hard.”

“So you want to fall in love?”

He went on to add:

" how people always say they don’t like poetry, they don't understand it. Then they tell me of their favourite poet, the poem that changed their life, they’ll even recite it perfectly word for word." 

"Yeah, you don’t like poetry."