Everette Maddox

Everette "Rhett" Maddox (1944–1989) was an American poet who in 1979 co-founded (with Robert Stock and sculptor Franz Heldner) the longest-running poetry-reading series in the South at the Maple Leaf Bar in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Biography
Maddox was born near Prattville, Alabama. He studied at the University of Alabama, where he did his doctoral work but did not graduate.

He moved to New Orleans; beginning in 1975, he taught at Xavier University but lost that position and later became homeless. Also in 1975, he became an associate editor for Louis Gallo's Burataria Review, then started organizing and MCing at the Maple Leaf Bar.

Maddox's work was published in The New Yorker and The Paris Review. He published two books of poetry; a third was published posthumously. Other poetry was included in Umpteen Ways of Looking at a Possum: Critical and Creative Responses to Everette Maddox, edited by Grace Bauer and Julie Kane. In 2009 another selection of his poetry was published, I Hope Its Not Over And Goodby: Selected Poems of Everette Maddox.

Maddox died of esophageal cancer in 1989. His ashes are buried in the patio behind the Maple Leaf Bar under a stone that reads: "Everette Maddox – He was a mess."