The Maverick Room

Wisconsin Bookwatch, March, 2005

The Maverick Room

Thomas Sayers Ellis

Graywolf Press

2402 University Avenue, Suite 203, Saint Paul, MN 53114

1555974147 $14.00 graywolfpress.org

The debut collection of poetry by Thomas Sayers Ellis (co-founder of The Dark Room Collective, a gathering place for young African American poets), The Maverick Room showcases a new and original voice in American poetry, one marked by inner-city youth culture energy that is part lyrical narrative, part "Parliament Funkadelic", a blind of chaos and control through the sheer and simple power of words. The Roll Call: Any half-decent rapper/Can conjure the dead,//Can reach into graves/And accuse God//Of Indian-giving./The trick is ancestral,//No more magic than memory's/Hidden strings & chains.//Trust me,/We haven't forgotten a name.//Say them. Raise your hands./Holler at me!