Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems

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"Thomas Sayers Ellis is that rare being: a gifted artist, a master of his craft, who does not sacrifice meaning for virtuosity. He deftly manages both, with artistic and political courage. On these pages he gives us language that sings AND dances; irresistible language that guides us through history and complex questions of aesthetics and politics. And he does so with humor, insight, and brilliance. His thoughtful meditations on meaning, on language, on possibility audaciously embody our anger and our love. From Washington, D.C., to Harvard, Ellis dares to name the tradition that shapes him and to wrestle with that which would limit and deter him. And, in a final, beautiful suite of poems, Ellis devotes his attention to Michael Jackson, who here finally receives the kind of reflection and thoughtful contextualization he deserves. In the final poem, Ellis is to Jackson what O'Hara was to Lady Day: a poet who gives voice to our mourning, without sensation and in the midst of the mundane and the quotidian, thereby making our loss all the more palpable. As with the titles he enshrines within, Skin, Inc. is sure to be yet another star in our galaxy of poetry." FARAH JASMINE GRIFFIN" "Skin, Inc. is a Book of African Names. In 'The Obama Hour,' Ellis examines precisely what we call our art, our president, and ourselves. Penetrating, muscular, and aggressive, Ellis's identity repairman may be a minimalist, but his sweep is epic. 'Before I was born / I absorbed struggle,' writes Ellis. 'Just looking / at history hurts.'" TA-NEHISI COATES" "Thomas Sayers Ellis is one of the most gifted poets of his generation and more. He reminds me of the ancient Greek bards who found poetic and theatrical vehicles to comment on contemporary politics and society---those great intellectuals and artists Athenians turned to when they wanted something closer to the truth than the official story. In this brilliant and penetrating collection, Ellis throws himself into the role of political bard, a voice of challenge and reason and utopia and warning in the age of Obama. Skin, Inc. is about repair and reflection, it's about coming to terms with history so we can move forward, not to a postracial future but an antiracist and ultimately postracist society. But he is less interested in recounting our histories of oppressions than in our creative capacity, the black roots of a unique prosody, and the power of poetry and the poet to speak to beauty, grace, perseverance, in the face of violence, enslavement, commodification. 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" "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. 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. Skin, Inc. is the latest work by one of the most audacious and provocative poets now writing." "Because he's already a master of the modern poem---line lime limbo vibe verb riff riddim syllable iconography---a wide happy fearless intelligence, diligent in the verse, willing to carry the frontier forward---TSE (not that Other!/but like that Other!) can press his secular psalms about & against catastrophe into a trance-like density as 'easy' as prose, converting the 'everyday,' which his vision privileges, as deadily accurate as a sling-shot into the universelle---for xample (about MJ in this critique of the universelle)---'The tip of the nose is real, the tip of the nose is a prosthetic [even here we can hear 'ethic' & 'aesthetic'] / but he can afford it: the expensive peace / of speechless bleached skin' [my italics]. A whole new different kind of millennium." KAMAU BRATHWAITE.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

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.)

Library Journal

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

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781555975678
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Publication date: 8/31/2010
Pages: 112
Sales rank: 1,172,156
Product dimensions: 7.20 (w) x 9.00 (h) x 0.90 (d)

Meet 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.

As Segregation, As Us 3

Or 4

My Meter is Percussive 6

Spike Lee at harvard 8

Society for the Friends of Former Property

I The Return of Colored Only 21

II Song on 23

III Understanding the New Genuine Negro Hero 25

The Identity Repairman 27

Ways to be Black in a Poem 29

Aws Ode 31

Mr. Dynamite Splits

Mr. Dynamite Splits 35

Audience 58

The Obama Hour 60

No Easy Task 62

Skin, Inc. 65

Smudge 67

Two Manifestos

The New Perform-A-Form 71

Presidential Blackness 74

Covers-Elect 78

Godzilla's Avocado 82

The Judges of Craft

The Judges of Craft 85

Race Inauguration Day 92

A Waste of Yellow 94

Race Change Operation 95

Sermon on the Unrecognizable Shapes of Change 97

The Pronoun-Vowel Reparations Song

The Pronoun-Vowel Reparations Song 103

A Few Excuses 120

Mr. Drum 122

A Galaxy of Black Writing 126

First Grade, All Over Again 129

Gone Pop

1 Falco Berigora 139

2 Steeltown Boys 140

3 Three Screws 142

4 "Lemme Tell You Now" 145

5 The Black Beatles 147

6 Automatic Systematic 150

7 Bye Bye 5 152

8 Brotherly Triumph, Destiny Love 154

9 A Scare a Crow a Pea a Cock 156

10 Sonic Personality 158

11 Ola Ray 162

12 Typhoon Michael 164

13 Wacko Jacko 166

14 White Skin, Black Surgical Masks 169

15 The Last Anti-Gravity Lean Dream 172

Absolute Otherwhere 174

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Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems

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