Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems

by Thomas Sayers Ellis

Overview

The brilliant and provocative second book of poems by Thomas Sayers Ellis, now available in paperback

Skin, Inc. is Thomas Sayers Ellis's 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 and performs tributes for the Godfather of Soul, James Brown; the King of Pop, Michael Jackson; and the election of President Barack Obama. This book assures Ellis's place as one of the most audacious poets now writing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555976507
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	08/06/2013
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Thomas Sayers Ellis is the author of The Maverick Room. A photographer and poet, Ellis teaches in the MFA creative writing program at Lesley University and is the poetry editor of the Baffler. He divides his time between New York and Washington, D.C.

Editorial Reviews

No doubt, this is a major book.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“The fine and noble tradition of protest poetry is in safe, strong hands.” —The New York Journal of Books

“In work like this, Ellis is writing some of the finest, truly public poetry of our time.” —David Orr

“Ellis has something to say about the moment we're in, and he is that rare breed of poet, the kind whose works will be studied for generations to come, whose name will be uttered alongside that other great T.S.” —Robin D. G. Kelley

From the Publisher

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/ ‘Nigger' and ‘Bitch.'" 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,/ ‘Academic' and ‘Spoken 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. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Ellis's bold second collection (after The Maverick Room) constitutes an impassioned argument for revitalizing America's calcified literary culture ("Flat, fixed and finished"), whose conventional assumptions about the expression of racial identity severely limit the aesthetic choices available to both writers and readers of color ("These genres these borders these false distinctions/ are where we stay at/ in freedom's way"). Sayers regards postracial America as a myth ("we did not arrive after us") and finds that individual creativity, subsumed by the elite, monolithic power of technologically driven mass media ("all/ the camera-phones,/ raised like Rockefellers,/ above the rest of us"), is compromised by the rigid criteria necessary for mainstream cultural validation ("Equality will skin you/ if you don't exceed ISBN"). With honesty, eloquence, and precision, Ellis calls for resistance to the outward imposition of social and personal identity while acknowledging the difficulty of the task ("I no longer write white/ while writing/ yet white writing/ won't stop writing me"). VERDICT Certain to ignite debate on campuses and blogs, this work is the perfectly realized embodiment of its author's intent, likely to inspire poets of all ethnic backgrounds for some time to come.—Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY

Library Journal