If you wanted to hear some poetry on campus this past week, apparently all you had to say was “Please.” Jericho Brown, a professor of poetry at Emory University, as well as the author of a like-titled book, visited Binghamton University Tuesday night as a part of A Readers’ Series event. Brown’s “Please” won the American Book Award, and he has recently released a new work titled, “The New Testament.” His poems have appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Best American Poetry, and Nikki Giovanni’s collection of “100 Best African American Poems.” Brown has received a Whiting Award as well as fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan, the director of the creative writing program and the Center for Writing, has known Brown for eight years and refered to him as a “heartfelt storyteller with a sense of music” when she introduced him.

“Poetry is asking us to feel in a world that tells us not to,” said Gillan. “Like what Jericho was saying, so often our inboxes are cluttered with YouTube and other videos of people falling or getting hurt and we are meant to laugh. Poetry is telling us to stay alive; all of us who love poetry know poetry can teach us to be more human.”

Brown first read a poem from his most recent book “The New Testament” because “where I’m from we start with prayer,” he said. The poem connected the religious context of “The Father” in Christianity and physical violence from a “father’s hand.” The poem was from the perspective of a young boy with a “bruising lip” who attempted to reason with his father’s actions.

A few pieces later, Brown explored a relationship in which love and abuse coexist. The woman in the poem is depicted as loving the father and his hands even when they are being used against her, the man as loving her body even when hunched and retreating away from him. The piece ends with the two discussing names for the newest member of the family and making love loud enough for the oldest to understand.

“I know what my obsessions are,” Brown said. “It’s okay to return to your subjects but I have to be surprised and discover things as I write.” He said it’s interesting to write something “down on a page and ask yourself, ‘Do I believe what I just wrote or what I believed since I was 6?’” In response to praise for his ability to explain where and how he finds inspiration, Brown said that he always feels that “as an artist of never feel[ing] like you’re doing enough. Want to get to the bone, the marrow of the bone, get to myself.”

Being in the audience served as a lesson in influence. He drew from Greek mythology — “not the only mythology there is, by the way” — and “Love Jones,” a movie that “works every time” on date night, as well as Alice Walker’s “The Third Life of Grange Copeland.” Artists ranging from Minnie Riperton, Janis Joplin, Betty Smith and Langston Hughes had an obvious role in shaping Brown’s adolescence, the tone of the poems and the development of the content. The structure of the reading resembled a musical album as well; each title was referred to as a track.

In addition to subject matter, music influences how Brown uses sound, tone and dialogue in his writing. Listening to Brown describe his writing process felt intensely private, like I was peeping into his inner workings. He starts by thinking about changes in tone and attractive sounds, and then fills in content later. That’s how we listen to music: “You can have a favorite song and not know the words, it just comes on and you know what the feeling is.”

“Read as much as you can and treat it like an art form,” Brown said. “Treat literature the same as music and [visual] art. You have to turn on the radio. You have to go to readings, go to classes where you’re exposed to different writings and then you make your mind up about them.”