I never thought I would type that I learned how to emote in poems from watching Star Trek but there it is.
ADRIAN MATEJKAIt was in the air somehow. That ownership of bigotry. I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid.
More Adrian Matejka Quotes
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It will alter the way you hear poetry forever. And not in a good way.
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I was just thinking about not getting picked on for being black and not being hungry.
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I was always casting about for role models as a kid and the Star Trek was always available via reruns and also full of possibilities.
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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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You should check out William Shatner’s album The Transformed Man.
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I mean getting people to think about what language actually means before they use it is a good thing.
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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 was a poor, geeky black kid in Indianapolis. There is nothing mythological about that.
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Bigotry doesn’t care about state or regional lines. It’s all over the place.
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They are 100% the product of the circumstances that led me home.
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But it’s become very clear the past nine years that some Americans truly resent thinking before they speak.
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The contrasts between the haves and have-nots is so complicated.
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Because before that I wasn’t thinking about systems or food insecurity or whatever.
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The 1990s were also when a bunch of the soft-shoe language for race, gender, and class became paramount.
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Echo of a Scream (1937).’ I got spun out by the way he creates tension and movement through the interlocking details in the painting.
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