JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
An influential poet has died at the age of 61. Thomas Sayers Ellis died after suffering from respiratory issues earlier this month in St. Petersburg, Florida. ½ûÂþÌìÌÃ's Neda Ulaby has this remembrance.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Thomas Sayers Ellis took the stage at New York City's Bowery Poetry Club in 2008.
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THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS: Here's a poem about being skinny.
ULABY: You can see him reading the poem called "Sticks" on YouTube. It's autobiographical - about growing up with a violent dad...
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ELLIS: (Reading) His eyes were the worst kind of jury - deliberate, distant.
ULABY: ... And wanting to be just like that formidable father.
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ELLIS: (Reading) A plagiarist, hitting the things he hit. I learned to use my hands watching him use his.
ULABY: But Ellis learned to use his hands to write poetry.
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ELLIS: (Reading) My first attempts were filled with wild noise - violent, uncontrollable blows. The page tightened like a drum, resisting the clockwise twisting of a handheld chrome key, the noisy banging and tuning of growth.
(APPLAUSE)
ULABY: Thomas Sayers Ellis was born in Washington, D.C. He got an MFA from Brown University. In 1987, he attended the funeral of James Baldwin. That moved him to help start a community for Black poets that became known and admired as the Dark Room Collective.
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ULABY: Ellis was also an accomplished photographer and bandleader. He co-founded a free jazz ensemble, here performing at New York's Vision Festival in 2019.
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ELLIS: A single continuous call (ph). Shall art not art be an antidote? Medievally fascinated (ph). Art, not art...
ULABY: In 2016, Ellis was dismissed as a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop after anonymous allegations of sexual misconduct published online. He never commented about the charges, but kept working.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ELLIS: I can't prevent the poems from coming.
BONITA LEE PENN: Right.
ULABY: In a YouTube interview with poet Bonita Lee Penn in 2013, Ellis said surrendering to poetry was not an easy process.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ELLIS: Get frustrated, scratch my head, bored. Just get up, come back, sit down again and bang the pencil against the page.
ULABY: Until, he said, he found the beat and could begin.
Neda Ulaby, ½ûÂþÌìÌà News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by ½ûÂþÌìÌÃ, Copyright ½ûÂþÌìÌÃ.
½ûÂþÌìÌà transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an ½ûÂþÌìÌà contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of ½ûÂþÌìÌÃ’s programming is the audio record.
