Praise for The Hungry Ghost Diner

"From its title through to its final poem, Kelly Ann Ellis’s The Hungry Ghost Diner is a marvel of deeply textured and beautifully paradoxical ideas, arisings, and relationships. In a voice so equally authoritative and self-deprecating that it can only be the voice of wisdom, and in a style both skillfully crafted and as easily flowing as a coffee refill at a diner, Ellis blends elevated intellectual and cultural references with a working-class intelligence and sensibility to examine the joys and difficulties of aging, interpersonal relationships, class dynamics, poverty, and other such vital topics. Ultimately, through her sophisticated literary prowess, Ellis imbues her subject matter with the kind of warm humor and vibrant conversational detail that make a reader wish she could stay at The Hungry Ghost Diner forever, conversing deep into the night with this soulful, generous poet."  

– Melissa Studdard, author of Dear Selection Committee and I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast

"Kelly Ann Ellis is an artist with sharp utensils. In The Hungry Ghost Diner, she cuts into the power of narrative by responding to mythology, pop culture, poets, musicians, a harp, Houdini, and “women who reel off specials like crazed Betty Crockers.” She transposes the wide-ranging texts we come to know as subtext for a brutally honest speaker. She wields unique diction we didn’t know we wanted, then relentlessly dives in. As it turns out, when the last poem permeates home, we are compelled to believe we ate and drank at a place we’ve never been before, or maybe we just forgot. Regardless, we want to return for more." 

– John Milkereit, author of A Place Comfortable with Fire

"In boldly honest and tenderly vulnerable poems, Kelly Ann Ellis lures us to the gritty counters of the world’s diners where everything is on the memory menu. The eateries function as place holders for poems imaginative as “koi catches fire,” artful as museum meditations, ironic as “His love for me is like a bill he forgets to pay,” and disarming as “…gargling God’s name.” Ellis is a discontented seeker intelligently probing her world, turning hungers into a redemptive, unflinching collection admirers and new readers alike will savor." 

–  Carolyn A. Dahl, author of A Muddy Kind of Love

"Ellis’s subject matter is as variegated and extensive as the poet’s prodigious knowledge. A master of paradox, she artfully conveys both the coldness of philosophical reflection and the scalding heat of human passion, often within the confines of a single poem. The range of her allusions, always spot-on, is nothing less than stunning. In 'The Stuff They Feed Us' alone, she references Enkidu, Persephone, Eve, God, Satan, Socrates, Buddha, Kafka, Wonder Bread, Kool-Aid and Christ. Ellis’s ekphrastic poems are especially noteworthy and skillfully executed, triggered by a range of artists from The Mangbetu to Dalí and Botticelli to Courbet. Ellis's assured and direct poetic diction, at its best, brings to mind that of Plath, especially the latter’s boldness in pushing assonance and alliteration to the edge of the abyss while never allowing it to plunge into monotonous oblivion. Such linguistic skill is evident throughout Ellis’s collection, exemplified by the following: 'Not one to be caught off guard / I kill us off out of habit'; and 'Dead flesh is made succulent / by marinating, braising, pounding— / broken down to please the palate.'  This reviewer gives The Hungry Ghost Diner his highest recommendation." 

– Larry D. Thomas, 2008 Texas Poet Laureate, Member of Texas Institute of Letters