Author2Author: Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon & Thomas Sayers Ellis, pt. 2

After learning what Lyrae's writing, our attention turns to some of the qualities in Thomas' current collection of poems, The Maverick Room.

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon: I'm interested in whether the sections of The Maverick Room that parallel the districts of Washington, D.C., mirror them in any way, tonally, or the ways the poems cut through, if at all, like the streets there. D.C.'s one of the few places I've been where I can get lost walking! And that having made no turns. The streets turn into other streets. You find yourself elsewhere without ever meaning to be, which is fascinating. How much playing with that did you do?

Thomas Sayers Ellis: I agree about the surprises walking through D.C. can present, with the local interrupting the federal and vice versa, so that was there (as I love walking through Washington). Remember Benjamin Banneker peeped the frustrated Frenchman's plans for the city and added his own twist and turns--those circles and wide avenues like escape routes. I think that the poems in The Maverick Room are filled with escape routes not just surprises. You see, I'm a tradition hound. The sections of the book attempt to invent a new map and truth, a repaired literary one: new places to live and other literacies: emotional, social and visual. I want D.C. to change. I want the percussion to continue but I am not sure that politics is the best or first bridge to do so. A line is a walk, a line break is a break then a turn and nowadays we turn before the line breaks. We verse and reverse. I hope you got lost, eye-lost, in The Maverick Room.