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National Book Award Finalist To Share ‘Myth’ At SHSU
Oct. 23, 2014
SHSU Media Contact: Jennifer Gauntt, Scott Kaukonen
One hundred years ago, Jack Johnson, a man born to emancipated slaves in Galveston, was the heavyweight-boxing champion of the world, the first black man to ever hold the title.
His figure, both as man and myth, stands at the center of Adrian Matejka’s latest book of poetry, “The Big Smoke,” a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award and for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and winner of the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
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Adrian Matejka |
Matejka will read from his work at 6 p.m. on Monday (Nov. 3), in Austin Hall.
The event, sponsored by the Sam Houston State University Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing, editing and publishing, is free and open to the public.
“‘The Big Smoke’ explores the intersection of myth, culture, race, and personal charisma with bracing honesty and insight,” said Nick Lantz, assistant professor of creative writing at SHSU. “Matejka inhabits the characters in these poems with such depth and clarity that we cannot escape their fully human complexity. The Jack Johnson of these poems is charming, brutal, inspiring, and horrific.”
Johnson was born in 1878 and fought his first fights in Texas.
He overcame the violent segregationism of Jim Crow to challenge white boxers—and white America—and became the first African-American heavyweight world champion in 1908, a title he would hold until 1915.
It was his rise to claim the most coveted sporting title of the time that led to the notion of the “Great White Hope,” a white fighter who might reclaim the title from Johnson.
But Johnson did not merely challenge white America from inside the ring; outside the ring, he controversially flaunting his wealth and relations with white women. He would marry three times, and each of his wives was white.
Johnson became an early example of the “celebrity athlete,” making appearances in film and on radio, endorsing products, and indulging in expensive hobbies.
It isn’t always easy to separate the man from the myth with Johnson, a legacy Matejka explores over the course of the book, according to Lantz.
Matejka’s book is part-historic reclamation and part-interrogation of Johnson’s complicated legacy, one that often misremembers the magnetic man behind the myth.
“Matejka’s poetry resists all reductionism and quick judgment in his vivid portrayal of Johnson’s struggles both in and out of the ring,” Lantz said. “There are no easy successes: Johnson wins the fight against white boxer Jim Jeffries but other African Americans are lynched in the race riots that ensue afterward. While much of the book takes place a century ago, the traps that Johnson navigates feel just as raw today.”
Matejka was born in Nuremberg, Germany, and grew up in California and Indiana.
He is a graduate of Indiana University and the MFA program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
His first collection of poems, “The Devil’s Garden,” won the 2002 New York/New England Award from Alice James Books, and his second collection, “Mixology,” published by Penguin Books in 2009, was a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series.
“Mixology” also was a finalist for a NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature–Poetry.
Matejka is a winner of the Julia Peterkin Award and recipient of two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Lannan Foundation.
His works have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2010, Gulf Coast, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner among other journals and anthologies.
He teaches in the MFA program at Indiana University in Bloomington and is currently working on a new collection of poems and a graphic novel.
For more information, contact Scott Kaukonen, director of the MFA program in creative writing, editing and publishing, at kaukonen@shsu.edu or 936.294.1407.
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