One of the hardest things for me to do is be fully open in a poem.
ADRIAN MATEJKAThis poem began as an emulation of Siqueiros’s compositional style and, in the process, became an ekphrastic aubade about my old neighborhood.
More Adrian Matejka Quotes
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By that I mean, honest and not trying to amplify some mythological version of myself.
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They are 100% the product of the circumstances that led me home.
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This poem began as an emulation of Siqueiros’s compositional style and, in the process, became an ekphrastic aubade about my old neighborhood.
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But fortunately there are also really excellent human beings all over the place, too. So it’s about perception and balance sometimes I think.
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I had to find a way to be more honest about what happened. And it wasn’t fun to write, even though the poems aren’t 100% autobiographical.
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It will alter the way you hear poetry forever. And not in a good way.
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I wanted to be like Spock because he was unflappable.
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I was fortunate enough to get a job at my alma mater, which brought me back to Indiana after being gone for twenty years.
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It was in the air somehow. That ownership of bigotry. I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid.
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So while I loved not being hungry and having new gear, etc. I missed the sounds of my neighbors and the kind of generosity people who are struggling together often show.
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I never thought I would type that I learned how to emote in poems from watching Star Trek but there it is.
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You should check out William Shatner’s album The Transformed Man.
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That was one of things that surprised me so much when I was writing the poems.
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Because before that I wasn’t thinking about systems or food insecurity or whatever.
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The day after the president Trump election, I remember feeling like it was 1984 again.
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