Photo Credit: Roderick Smith
Thomas Sayers Ellis is a poet and photographer.
Ellis also co-founded The Dark Room Collective (in Cambridge, Massachusetts); and received his M.F.A. from Brown University. He is the author of The Maverick Room (2005), which won the John C. Zacharis First Book Award, and a recipient of a Mrs. Giles Whiting Writers’ Award. His poems and photographs have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Callaloo, Best American Poetry (1997, 2001 and 2010), Grand Street, The Baffler, Jubilat, Tin House, Poetry, and The Nation.
Skin, Inc. is the latest work by one of the most audacious and provocative poets now writing. (Greywolf Press)
Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems
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Hardcover: 112 pages
Publisher: Graywolf Press (August 31, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1555975674
ISBN-13: 978-1555975678
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
The ambitious, combative, and spot-on new poetry book by Thomas Sayers
Ellis, author of the award-winning The Maverick Room
Skin, Inc. is Thomas Sayers Ellis’s big, ambitious argument in sound and
image for an America whose identity is in need of repair. In lyric sequences
and with his own photographs, Ellis traverses the African American and
American literary landscapes—along the way adding race fearlessness to past
and present literary styles and themes, and perform-a-forming tributes for
the Godfather of Soul, James Brown; the King of Pop, Michael Jackson; and
the election of President Barack Obama. Part manifesto, part identity repair
kit, part plea for poetic wholeness, this collection worries and
self-defends, eulogizes and casts a vote, raises a fist and, often, an
intimidating song. One sequence is written as a sonic/ visual diagram of
pronouns and vowels; another quotes from editors’ rejections of his own
poetry included in the book; another poem, “Race Change Operation,” begins:
“When I awake I will be white, the color of law.” Skin, Inc. is the latest
work by one of the most audacious and provocative poets now writing.
from “The Return of Colored Only”
Naturally, this will scare
the civil rights out of some
and, for a mad-moment, empower
a great many wrong-cultured others.
The Maverick Room: Poems
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Paperback: 120 pages
Publisher: Graywolf Press; First Edition edition (December 23, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1555974147
ISBN-13: 978-1555974145
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.4 inches
With its defiance for any one tradition or voice, Thomas Sayers Ellis’s debut becomes a powerful argument against monotony
from “Groovallegiance”
A dream. A democracy. A savage liberty.
And yet another anthem and yet another heaven
and yet another party wants you.
Wants you wants you wants you.
In one poem, Thomas Sayers Ellis prognosticates, “Pretty soon, the Age of the Talk Show / Will slip on a peel left in the avant- gutter.” The result is The Maverick Room, the testing ground of determination and serendipity, where call-and-response becomes Steinian echo becomes Post-Soul percussive pleasure becomes a bootlegged recording hustled out of a D.C. go-go club.
Take
Three: Agni New Poets Series: 1
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Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: Graywolf Press (February 1, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 155597239X
ISBN-13: 978-1555972394
Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
Take Thomas Sayers Ellis: Ellis's fractured syntax, his spasmodic, staccato
utterance suggest a defiant sensibility. Indeed, at the center of Ellis's
work is the figure of an aggressive father, taunting his son into song.
Thomas Sayers Ellis was a founding member of Boston's Dark Room Collective
and coeditor of AGNI's successful poetry anthology, On the Verge
Take Larissa Szporluk: This poet stalks a landscape that is humid, stylized,
Southern. The poet Gregory Orr says of her work: "Faced with such rending
beauty, such ravished lucidity, all we can do is stand back and gaze with
gratitude and awe." Larissa Szporluk studied at the Iows Writers' Workshop,
has taught at Bowling Green State University, and now resides in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
Take Joe Osterhaus: Unabashedly intellectual and demanding, Osterhaus's
verse displays a rare elegance. According to David St. John, "these precise
meditations are dazzling for their ability to touch the seemingly ordinary
moments of a life and find in them the materials of both miracle and
change." Joe Osterhaus has published in such places as the Antioch Review,
the Boston Review, and the Nebraska Review, and he currently lives in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Edited by Askold Melnyczuk and the poetry panel of AGNI magazine, Take Three
is the first in an important annual series designed to launch the work of
new poets.
The
Genuine Negro Hero
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Paperback: 32 pages
Publisher: Kent State University Press (March 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 087338704X
ISBN-13: 978-0873387040
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches
Related Links
Official Website
http://www.tsellis.com/
