The Maverick Room

"The wondrous Maverick Room, Ellis's opus of sonic site-specific artistry, reminds us of Ralph Ellison's sampling of Emerson's observation that 'geography is fate.'"—Michael Eric Dyson

"This linguistic tome maps the segments of the District, the nation's capital. These quadrants condition the self, an inward geography: riffs, nicknames, the cunning fragments constructed from the language of pop art, hip-hop, the threshold of family, the death of the father, the sustenance and strength of the mother, the testimony of the son. Ellis is our tour guide: his poetry is about the neighborhood, native speech, a probing intellect, innovative prosody, experimental wit, a parlance of the street, gardens and maps, the upper and lower frequencies as registry of song."—Michael S. Harper

"Ellis's work is always fascinating; he seems to do it without mirrors—describing something without looking directly at it—the language taking the idea, carefully wrapped, in the casual stance of somebody still not uptight about whether the poem has to say everything he knows and be that and himself for all times. There is a seeming 'languor' cooling his words across you: arch, self-tickled, sharp, signifying, yet not backed against the wall of any absolute, including himself."—Amiri Baraka