The Maverick Room

“This linguistic tome maps the segments of the district, from ground level ‘beneath the veil of social hierarchy,’ the nation’s capitol. These quadrants also condition the self, an inward geography: riffs, nicknames, the cunning fragments constructed from the language of pop art, hip hop, the threshold of family, the death of the father, the sustenance and strength of the mother, the testimony of the son. Thomas Sayers Ellis is tour guide: his poetry is about the neighborhood, native speech, a probing intellect, innovative prosody, experimental wit, a parlance of the street, gardens and maps, the upper and lower frequencies as registry of song.” —Michael S. Harper

“Ellis’s work is always fascinating; he seems to do it without mirrors—describing something without looking directly at it—the language taking the idea, carefully wrapped, in the casual stance of somebody still not uptight about whether the poem has to say everything he knows and be that and himself for all times. There is a seeming ‘languor’ cooling his words across you: arch, self-tickled, sharp, signifying, yet not backed against the wall of any absolute, including himself.” —Amiri Baraka

In this powerhouse debut, Thomas Sayers Ellis in one poem 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 hip-hop becomes a bootlegged recording hustled out a DC go-go club. With its defiance for any one tradition or voice, Ellis’ debut collection becomes a powerful argument against monotony—just when “All their stanzas look alike,” just when language fails in the face of catastrophe, just when, as Ellis confesses, “the twin terrors at the center of the word dollar / have made me and my craft liar-cowards.” The Maverick Room introduces a brave, intelligent, and original new voice to American poetry.