This poem began as an emulation of Siqueiros’s compositional style and, in the process, became an ekphrastic aubade about my old neighborhood.
ADRIAN MATEJKABut fortunately there are also really excellent human beings all over the place, too. So it’s about perception and balance sometimes I think.
More Adrian Matejka Quotes
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I wanted to be like Kirk because he had magnetism and the ladies loved him.
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Bigotry doesn’t care about state or regional lines. It’s all over the place.
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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 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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But it’s become very clear the past nine years that some Americans truly resent thinking before they speak.
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That was one of things that surprised me so much when I was writing the poems.
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By that I mean, honest and not trying to amplify some mythological version of myself.
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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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I learned a new language for it all in the 90s. Which in some ways isn’t bad.
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I was just thinking about not getting picked on for being black and not being hungry.
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One of the things I took from the show was emotional possibility.
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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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I mean getting people to think about what language actually means before they use it is a good thing.
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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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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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