Home / Quotes / Quote by Adrian Matejka

Quote by Adrian Matejka

“The 1990s were also when a bunch of the soft-shoe language for race, gender, and class became paramount. Because before that I wasn't thinking about systems or food insecurity or whatever. I was just thinking about not getting picked on for being black and not being hungry.”

Quote by Adrian Matejka

Author

Adrian Matejka is an American poet born on September 5, 1971. His work is known for exploring issues of race, class, and identity, and has received acclaim from readers and critics alike. more

You May Also Like

“I learned a new language for it all in the 90s. Which in some ways isn't bad... I mean getting people to think about what language actually means before they use it is a good thing. But it's become very clear the past nine years that some Americans truly resent thinking before they speak.”

People Thinking Mean Past Speak Language Good Things Resent

Author:Adrian Matejka

“The day after the president Trump election, I remember feeling like it was 1984 again. It was in the air somehow. That ownership of bigotry. I hadn't seen it since I was a kid. It made me want to change the kinds of poems I was writing, but I'm terrible at writing overtly political poems.”

Writing Kind Feelings Kids Remember Political President Terrible Election Bigotry Ownership

Author:Adrian Matejka

“Bigotry doesn't care about state or regional lines. It's all over the place. But fortunately there are also really excellent human beings all over the place, too. So it's about perception and balance sometimes I think.”

Thinking Sometimes Care Balance Perception Excellent Bigotry

Author:Adrian Matejka

“That was one of things that surprised me so much when I was writing the poems. The contrasts between the haves and have-nots is so complicated. It's financial of course, but it's also the lifestyle choices. The more money people have the further away from each other they often want to be. 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.”

People Writing Kind Together Choices Struggle Financial Complicated Neighbor Lifestyle Hungry Generosity Contrast

Author:Adrian Matejka

“I was fortunate enough to get a job at my alma mater, which brought me back to Indiana after being gone for twenty years. There is no way I would have written these poems had I not come back. They are 100% the product of the circumstances that led me home.”

Enough Home Circumstances

Author:Adrian Matejka

“If I can quote myself, I explained whatever it is I'm doing once for No Tell Motel, and I still think it's the clearest I've ever been about this: "I don't write free verse poems - mostly because I can't. But I am interested in the musical effects achievable with free verse."”

Thinking Writing Musical Verses

Author:Shane McCrae

“I believe rhythmic sensibility is always a product and extension of language, defined broadly, among other things. But it is an immediate product and extension - no time elapses between the exposure to language and the creation of rhythmic sensibility.”

Believe Language I Believe Creation Sensibility

Author:Shane McCrae

“I do try to incorporate particular rhythmic and generally sonic motifs I discover in music as such, and if one thinks of language in a narrow sense, that, perhaps, suggests a possibility for a rhythmic sensibility that enters poetry from outside of language.”

Thinking Trying Language Possibility Sensibility

Author:Shane McCrae

“Certainly for me prose has a dilatory capacity, insofar as I don't trust my abilities in prose. I imagine I could have done the same thing in poetry, but sometimes I feel more fluent in poetry than in prose, and as a consequence perhaps I might pass too quickly by a thing that I might, in prose, have struggled merely to articulate. That struggle creates space, and it seems to me a particular kind of space into which memory flows easily. I suspect I think better in poetry, however.”

Thinking Kind Sometimes Done Memories Ability Struggle Imagine Consequence Prose

Author:Shane McCrae

“That's a fairly Wordsworthian way to look at things! But yeah, actually - part of the poet's work, I think, is to maintain or reintroduce the imaginative capacity of their earlier self while nonetheless maturing. And I do think the more successful the poet is at this particular thing, the greater their achievement as a poet.”

Thinking Successful Poet Achievement Mature Imaginative

Author:Shane McCrae