Thomas Sayers Ellis (1963–2025)

Jazz had its army of poems and poets. Hip-hop has its army of poems and poets. In Thomas Sayers Ellis' Maverick Room, funk finally gets its due. He brings the scene and memory of growing up impoverished in Washington D.C. in the shadow of the White House in the richest country on Earth, and pairs that youth with a rhythm and verse of political and neighborhood lyric with a bass line meter and soaring guitar breaks.

The beauty and fire of The Maverick Room doesn't stop there, however. Ellis show more moves from form to form, keeping lines quick and unornamental, or letting them weigh down with density. He lets the form sit in tradition, or frees it to give and take from all the space on the page it needs.

Ellis lets his language create fast flowing idea, and those ideas become image and emotion. Culture and cultures float in and out in half reference -- everything from movies to music, art to clothing fads -- in half reference. Without a heavy hand, The Maverick Room combines that culture with sometimes subtle, sometimes not, shout-outs to Amiri Baraka, Robert Hayden, Bob Kaufman, and other forebears. And bringing together Baraka and Hayden is like overcoming physics -- something Thomas Sayers Ellis does time and time again in this book. show less