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The Maverick Room by Thomas Sayers Ellis, Graywolf Press, 2004, $14.00 paper, ISBN 1555974147.
While, for the most part, we hear from the same speaker throughout Thomas Sayers Ellis' debut full-length collection, he hardly speaks from the same vantage point twice. He is an African American man who came of age in Washington, D.C. He is a poet claiming an unoccupied place within contemporary poetry. He is a son trying to come to terms with the loss of a father. He is a young man crawling out from under the long and sometimes ominous shadows of older men. He is a surveyor of popular culture of all kinds. This constellation of roles demands a comparable constellation of styles and rhythms, ranging from the bounce of jazz to the clipped edginess of hip-hop, from the verbal grit of spoken-word to the long metered lines of classical poetry. Most impressive, however, is Ellis' willingness to put himself on opposite sides of his own issues.