Against Common Sense

Brian S. Ellis’s poems are heady, human, philosophical, sometimes dark, sometimes funny, beautifully nerdy, and always full of story. Recommended By Gigi L., Powells.com

Against Common Sense is a collection of poems. Against Common Sense is a collection of poems that thinks that complexity is a form of accuracy-which is to say, a form of honesty-and that simplicity itself is not a virtue; in fact, simplicity has been used many times as a form of violence. The poems in Against Common Sense do not think that there is a type of knowledge that a person can obtain that detracts from said person's overall ability to think: this is the theory that is invoked when common sense is employed; that it is possible somehow that learning can separate us from ourselves; that learning is a dangerous activity that will leave us with less information than we began with. Against Common Sense is a collection of poems, it is hoped, that thinks. Against Common Sense is a collection of poems.

Brian S. Ellis was born in Manchester, New Hampshire, and raised in Massachusetts. He first began performing his poems at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge. He is a member of the arts collective the Whitehaus Family Record. He is the author of the chapbook Pharmakos (2006) from Destructible Heart Press and the poetry collections: Uncontrolled Experiments in Freedom (2008) and Yesterday Won't Goodbye (2011) from Write Bloody Books, and American Dust Revisited (2013) and Often Go Awry (2015) from University of Hell Press. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times and, in 2013, he was the recipient of the William Stafford "War No More" Award from Portland Community College. He lives in Portland, Oregon.