Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems - Hardcover

Ellis, Thomas Sayers

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1555975674 ISBN 13: 9781555975678

Publisher: Graywolf Press, 2010

Synopsis

The ambitious, combative, and spot-on new poetry book by Thomas Sayers Ellis, author of the award-winning The Maverick Room

Naturally, this will scare
the civil rights out of some
and, for a mad-moment, empower
a great many wrong-cultured others.
―from "The Return of Colored Only"

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.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas Sayers Ellis is a poet and photographer. He is the author of a previous poetry book, The Maverick Room, and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and in the low-residency program at Lesley University. He lives in Brooklyn.

Reviews

Starred Review. Ellis's highly anticipated second collection has a bit of everything: poems in an array of forms--a concrete poem meditating on the English vowels and money, an abecedarian list of "Black Writing" terminology, a photo essay shot at the James Brown memorial at Harlem's Apollo Theatre; prose poems; meditations on New Yorker covers; and lots more. Throughout, Ellis (The Maverick Room) makes a complicated, often contradictory critique of race relations in America; he has as many self-corrections to put into practice, "sucker-punching I," as he does punches aimed at others: "One of these badass/ glorious days,/ the signs and negative sounds/ that worked against us/ will all begin their tenures/ of service.../ It has already begun with/ ÿNigger' and ÿBitch.' " While much of his work would be right at home on a spoken-word stage--Ellis is an extraordinary reader of his poems--he feels deeply uneasy about the pigeonholing of black poetry, "as if the craft of our/ inherited calling had only/ two camps of Blackness,/ ÿAcademic' and ÿSpoken Word.' " This big book concludes with an amazing 35-page biography/elegy for Michael Jackson and the era through which he lived, and which he deeply affected. No doubt, this is a major book.
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Ellis positions himself between the two primary schools of contemporary poetry (not only African American poetry, although the divide is especially noticeable there), which he defines as “Academic” and “Spoken Word” in his poem “No Easy Trick.” The “trick” is to bridge those apparent opposites, which he does superlatively in his second full collection. The cadence of speech is audible on the page, in his “uneven ribs of verse” that worry “text to talk and talk to text.” In the searing tradition of Ai, Ellis takes on the thorny questions of race and culture, and never mincing words about the damage racism has done: “If punctuation / were a punch, / I’d publish line breaks of fists.” But he sees poets as “identity repair-people, / faders of trick moves, trope-a-dopes / and okee dokes, / laying our dice down like ( ) like we love us.” A photographer as well as a poet, Ellis includes a sequence that combines the two art forms in homage to James Brown; another sequence explores the complex image and tragic reality of Michael Jackson’s life. Ellis’s distinctive voice offers a new model for written orature, and his audience steadily widens. --Patricia Monaghan

Edition details

• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1555975674
• ISBN 13: 9781555975678
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192