Tag: Thomas Sayers Ellis

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Stepping Inside of a Pocket that Reveals THE Pocket

Nena Brown

Nena Brown Writer View all of Nena’s Articles . . ——————————————————————– Posted up on MLK avenue SE, sipping pinot grigio out of a plastic cup, I put my pinky up in celebration of the fancy, bright and artsy atmosphere inside the Gallery of Vivid Solutions. Welcome to the unveiling of (Un)Lock It:  the Percussive People in the Go-Go Pocket by Thomas Sayers Ellis, a collection of Go-Go related photographs, related paraphernalia and posters.   They say a picture is worth a thousand words; how do you begin to translate a phenomenal exhibit of sporadic, tasteful, but candid photographs spanning years of … Continue reading Stepping Inside of a Pocket that Reveals THE Pocket

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One of the Various: On Thomas Sayers Ellis [The Nation]

Thomas Sayers Ellis

thenation.com Most poets are still just finding out about their stories in their second books, but Ellis is not most poets. The Maverick Room came in at 121 pages, twice the length of the average collection of poems; so Skin, Inc., which is 181 pages long, might be considered Ellis’s third through fifth books. Raised “in a so-called single parent household in Washington, D.C.,” and educated at Harvard and Brown, Ellis came to national attention as a literary community organizer. With fellow poet and Harvard grad Sharan Strange, he founded the Dark Room Reading Series out of their rented house … Continue reading One of the Various: On Thomas Sayers Ellis [The Nation]

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A Brief Analysis of Maria Izaurralle’s Photo of RE – The Remix [A prose-poem by Thomas Sayers Ellis]

Thomas Sayers Ellis

Hard to resist a good photo even if the symbolism surrounding the image is better than the actual aesthetic value of the photo. And we writers have to keep the scene honest. We are here to lift it, to see it clearly and creatively. Let’s consider the composition of the shot. Five framed guys. Familiar faces. Faces you know. The wickedest Go-Go pyramid alive. Think power. Think visual checkmate for a band that might have been losing its audience. Think legacy, think loss, think purpose. The only person in the shot (really) in focus is Whiteboy. Is that a metaphor, … Continue reading A Brief Analysis of Maria Izaurralle’s Photo of RE – The Remix [A prose-poem by Thomas Sayers Ellis]