Aster of Ceremonies: Poems

by JJJJJerome Ellis

A polyphonic new entry in Multiverse—a literary series written and curated by the neurodivergent—JJJJJerome Ellis’s Aster of Ceremonies beautifully extends the vision of his debut book and album, The Clearing , a “lyrical celebration of and inquiry into the intersections of blackness, music, and disabled speech” (Claudia Rankine). Aster of Ceremonies asks what rites we need now and how poetry, astir in the asters, can help them along. What is the relationship between fleeing and feeling? How can the voices of those who came before—and the stutters that leaven those voices—carry into our present moment, mingling with our own? When Ellis writes, “Bring me the stolen will / Bring me the stolen well,” his voice is a conduit, his “me” is many. Through the grateful invocations of ancestors—Hannah, Mariah, Kit, Jan, and others—and their songs, he rewrites history, creating a world that blooms backward, reimagining what it means for Black and disabled people to have taken, and to continue to take, their freedom.  By weaving a chorus of voices past and present, Ellis counters the attack of “all masters of all vessels” and replaces it with a family of flowers. He models how—as with his brilliant transduction of escaped slave advertisements—we might proclaim lost ownership over literature and history. “Bring me to the well,” he chants, implores, channels. “Bring me to me.” In this bringing, in this singing, he proclaims our collective belonging to shared worlds where we can gather and heal. The  Aster of Ceremonies  audiobook read and performed by JJJJJerome Ellis will be available everywhere you listen to audiobooks on October 24, 2023.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Disability, Audiobook

144 pages, Paperback

Published October 24, 2023

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has remapped my brain. The author is a stutterer and they use dysfluency in such a deep and powerful way that it has transformed my understanding of what poetry can be. Poetry is already a form of writing that uses space and emptiness more thoughtfully and carefully than most others, but this book in particular has shifted the way that intentional and unintentional gaps feed our understanding of history and of the present. I recommend listening to it, because it was perfectly narrated. Often when I say that, I mean that I was able to lose myself in a book, to totally give myself over to it, and that’s actually the opposite of what I mean here. listening to the authors speech layered a second dysfluency over that in the writing and pulled my attention to it so deeply over and over, making me focus on these poems and not letting myself drift away. It gave me so much to think about about gratitude and what we give our time to and what is worth our intention and genuinely I just think this is the clearest book I have ever experienced in form and style and design.

None of this even touches the content, which was also incredible and reading. When the acknowledgments seem to begin before the first poem even did, I could tell that the way that this was going to approach the content was different than anything I’ve seen before. The focus on what gets left out in history, what white supremacy wipes from the history of Black people, what powers and gifts and supports of Black people throughout history look like, how history is itself dysfluent, there’s just so much to hold onto and I will be thinking about this for a very long time.

[kari trail · Rating 3 out of 5]

to begin: this book was a thoughtful, interpersonal love letter to stutters, botanical asters, and heritage. very cool topics explored in a very stylized way. i loved how they found all these interesting spacial/textural ways to reclaim the humanity in stuttering, as a natural (maybe even ecological) gift. but! i must admit… i found a lot of parts cliche in their generality, perhaps their fluffiness? personally way too many footnotes thanking people for “helping them hear this arrival” (for me at least). jjjjerome is a very grateful person, i’ll give them that!

a few lines i liked quite a bit:

the extremely fraught nature of this archive
if stutters are vessels, what are they carrying?
speech is porous to music
is a stutter a form of early music?
i skip the crack in the sidewalk. i slip out the back door of time.
wild animals, desire, thirst, water, and god
this stutter is no less a part of the earth than the rest of my body
that name will be an arbor

and a quote by valentina izmirlieva: “the proper name of god is a list”

[N]

As a Black person who stutters, Ellis' work invites me to *be* into the pauses that stuttering invites (when so often the compulsion as a stutterer is to force yourself through the word you're stuttering).

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book whose performances (on the page and spoken) unfold with extreme care and reverence. There is also a hypnotic quality (especially in Benediction, Movement 2) where the wash of purple words and pauses felt… like a Terrence Malick montage). Having just finished Singh’s ‘Unthinking Mastery,’ I could not help but locate the ‘vulnerable reading’ in this book. How it situates us inside a complex ecology of words inside of words. A history of stewardship that escapes ownership. Where we can break ‘Masters’ into ‘Asters.’ Let our “ears eat grass.”

—Recommend getting audiobook AND text

[Sherman Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

:-(

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, there were two primary intentions present in this book. There was the intentional investigation of the stutter, the silence it brings, what fills that silence in the poet’s mind, and how that can be lyrically expressed to a reader. The other intention is a self-consciousness that, at times, was in service to the lyric ambitions of the book and at times felt like excess. Like where the poet appears especially concerned whether or not the reader will get the references, how much information the poet needs to lay out so process is evident and the significance of historical oppression is evident, and how the poet plans to address the oppression. I have only read two of Fred Moten’s books, and I can see in All That Beauty how the poet positions himself among others in his lyrical “improvisation” (his term). I think it’s a difficult space to occupy in poetry. Gesturing outward, locating your intellectual community, and writing a poetry that relates your voice with their voices. I don’t think Ellis positions themself through their introductions and footnotes so those portions feel embedded into the book.

In one of my readings, I see this self-conscious approach as a further investigation into their stutter. Like the familiar way stutters have been presented in prose is by reproducing the sound on the page. But Ellis’s stutter is an opportunity for thought. As “Benediction, Movement 2 (Octave)” illustrates the stutter as an ongoing opportunity for insularity and expression. Like the repeated bloom of an aster (to use the most ready imagery of the book). It’s not a sequence of sounds holding the speaker from the language they intend.

In all, the book has so many gestures to repetition and explanations of what the poet might be inhabiting during those repetitions. The synthesis between Ellis as the poet and “the poet” who authored Aster of Ceremonies is often collapsed. Or, maybe my biggest critique, I wish the book would provide more time for the “the poet” to show what their constant interrogation of a stutter looks like in poetic language. The book establishes many pieces (plants as elders, “runaway” Ancestors navigating through and finding refuge among these elders). They reference Zong! as one precedent. And I suppose I would have liked to see an additional reference in a book like Slave Moth: A Narrative in Verse. Not to advocate for more narrative. But to add dimension to these many summonses. There is the ritual summons for our attention. And I would be interested in a lyric elaboration, like what can a stutter as vessel do? Where could the “Help me let You gro wild in my throat” go?

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poems in ASTER OF CEREMONIES are experienced and felt, not read; words sometimes drift freely, sometimes catch on a closing bracket, sometimes turn infinite as a stretching of sound. Throughout, Jjjjjerome Ellis, artist and proud stutterer, promises us that “a stutter [is] a way to a necessary River,” and that it will bring us home.

A prayer, a song, a benediction. Ellis tends us towards astering the stutter, honoring history, tracing the stutter in Black ancestors, studying the way plants grow wild and praying that the stutter can be tended in the same way. ASTER comes together in words, image, music, song, essay, color, creating a beautiful and unforgettable homage.

What a gorgeous third book in Milkweed Books’ Multiverse, a literary series written and curated by the neurodivergent (and I love the ways that Ellis calls back to the previous two poets). ASTER is out Oct 24—and you may want to get the audiobook with it too to fully experience everything.

[I received a copy from the publisher; this is my honest review]

[Julia Kerrigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s hard to put what I thought of these poems into words—especially because I needed the help of a pitch app to fully appreciate them lol. JJJJJerome turns the reader into a congregation (that’s the best way I can think to express it).

Words for the new year:
“Be still and let the fountain fill with patience.”

“Grandmothers, please hold me in the green as long as possible, though I may scratch to leave. You know what is best for me. Learn me into new wandering.”

Words to inspire my work within the stuttering community:

“Could the Stutter that passes through my body be one of those mother tongues? The Stutter-older than English, maybe older than any language, maybe older than speech itself?”

“But I choose to risk the Stutter, to step into the Clearing. My impediment will be my Dwelling.”

“I will seek not to overcome You but to come with You; not to pray to be rid of You, but to pray for Your continued presence in my life. To stay with the mystery You steward.”

[Connie]

(In this blurb, I capitalize all “Plants” to celebrate Ellis’s capitalization of them in the collection.) With a bouquet I serendipitously arranged with a sprig of Goldenrod, a member of the Aster family, waving at me from my coffee table, I listened to the audiobook while reading along with my eyes, which I highly recommend. The third installment in Milkweed’s “Multiverse” series and Ellis’s second poetry title, the ebook boasts astounding purple illustrations of “Elder Yarrow” to “Elder Chokeberry,” and the audiobook streams music. Unfolding in five parts, this honors ancestry, names, language, and stuttering. A sentence I keep thinking about: “My stutter is a form of thirst, a calling in the throat, a seeking after the only thing that will quench me: sound, thunder, god.”

from “12 of the Best Poetry Collections from 2023” via BOOK RIOT: https://bookriot.com/best-poetry-coll...

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really just couldn't get into it. I listen to a lot of audiobooks at 1.5x speed or higher, often increasing the speed over the course of the book as I get used to the narrator's cadences. For this book I really tried not to do this, wanting to honor Ellis's speech impediment and their own reverence toward it... but when I got to the seemingly interminable series of plant elders and realized that it was going to span not one but several 'chapters' in the audiobook edition, I could not help but ratchet up the speed to get through it faster. Some of the other sections captured my interest more -- I was genuinely intrigued by the recycling and reframing of words from the notices of 'fugitive' slaves -- but overall this just wasn't for me.

[Sheysel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. I have to sit with this to understand what I make of this. I'm moved and feel like I've absorbed these words into my body and being. Feeling quite emotional in general, and feeling very seen in my neurodivergence and occasional stutter that has brought me pain and shame and silencing in my past. Now, I thank my stutter for the space it's created in my life; the space it's created in time.

P.S. This is the first book I've completed in 2025! I'm so happy about that! :) In the past, I would've been hard on myself about the fact that my first completed book was 5.5 months into 2025. Now, all I feel is pride and perseverance and strength! I finished my first full book this year and I am so happy about that :)

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never been in the presence of anything like this. I subscribed to Audible just to be able to able to listen to it while looking at the page, and I would suggest that for all. Hearing the pauses is everything. Hearing the repeated abbreviated biographies was everything. I, too, am struck by the sentence: "Some statistics indicate a high incidence of stuttering amongst slaves." I love how this author talks about reading. ("I am reading this book. I will always be reading this book") I could always listen to the singing here.

Thank you for weaving Asters and other plants into the songs and pages.

[Stephanie Dargusch Borders · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was so tough for me. I’ve only tried poetry on audio once but had I realized how much music was incorporated into this collection sooner, I would have sought out the audio version. I can’t read music at all, so the music portions may as well have been decorative—there was no way for me to have any clue in that regard.

[Scott Eggerding · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moving, passionate, honorific and deeply personal meditations on stuttering, dysfluency, runaway slave advertisements and the divine in nature. Unique and truly remarkable use of language, music, and history. Truly incomparable.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was gorgeous poetry. Ellis plays the part of a historiographer while using language as a tool for excavation, cataloguing, and transcendental piety. Asking again and again the meanings of words, silence, and every vital, liminal molecule in between.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will definitely reread this book and talk with others particularly music and poetry people to connect with it deeper. However I am done with my first read of it. There is much to think about and reflect upon.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the exploration of stuttering, ancestors, ceremony in these poems.
These poems also include musical notation and some plant pictures - although I wanted more of that I wonder how it would be to hear these live. I appreciate the mix of styles in this collection.

[Dina Samimi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Day 27 of sealey challenge. This was so smart and deliberate. I’ve never seen the inclusion of music composition or color in a poetry collection. A lot of introductory/explanatory content as well. I could do without the footnotes.

[Ciaran · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent showcase of playing with writing style/format to enhance the message throughout the poems and essays.

[ketall · Rating 4 out of 5]

The entire time I was reading this, I thought "This is a dope ass book" so I highly recommend.

[Brittany]

Beautiful. I highly recommend the audiobook <3

[Steph Medlock · Rating 5 out of 5]

gorgeous

[Sam Ghali · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the coolest books I own