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FURTHER READING
Poems by Thomas Sayers Ellis
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All Their Stanzas Look Alike  
by Thomas Sayers Ellis
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All their fences
   All their prisons
All their exercises
   All their agendas
All their stanzas look alike
   All their metaphors
All their bookstores
   All their plantations
All their assassinations
   All their stanzas look alike
All their rejection letters
   All their letters to the editor
All their arts and letters
   All their letters of recommendation
All their stanzas look alike
   All their sexy coverage
All their literary journals
   All their car commercials
All their bribe-spiked blurbs
   All their stanzas look alike
All their favorite writers
   All their writing programs
All their visiting writers
   All their writers-in-residence
All their stanzas look alike
   All their third worlds
All their world series
   All their serial killers
All their killing fields
   All their stanzas look alike
All their state grants
   All their tenure tracks
All their artist colonies
   All their core faculties
All their stanzas look alike
   All their Selected Collecteds
All their Oxford Nortons
   All their Academy Societies
All their Oprah Vendlers
   All their stanzas look alike
All their haloed holocausts
   All their coy hertero couplets
All their hollow haloed causes
   All their tone-deaf tercets
All their stanzas look alike
   All their table of contents
All their Poet Laureates
   All their Ku Klux classics
All their Supreme Court justices
   Except one, except one
Exceptional one.  Exceptional or not,
   One is not enough.
All their stanzas look alike,
   Even this, after publication,
Might look alike.  Disproves
   My stereo types.



From The Maverick Room by Thomas Sayers Ellis. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Sayers Ellis. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. All rights reserved.


Audio Clip
August 9, 2006
Bryant Park, New York City
From the Academy Audio Archive
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