Description: Selected for the 2008 National Poetry Series by Kevin Young
The poems in Adrian Matejka's second collection, Mixology, shapeshift through the myriad meanings of "mixing" to explore and explode ideas of race, skin politics, appropriation, and cultural identity. Whether the focus of the individual poems is musical, digital, or historical, the otherness implicit in being of more than one racial background guides Matejka's work to the inevitable conclusion that all things-no matter how disparate-are parts of the whole.Review Quotes: " Adrian Matejka provides a profound and powerful cocktail of personal history, hip hop elegy, and inventive language, measuring a clash of emotions and cultures with fat bass lines and sharp wit. A post-soul tour de force that places pop culture in a blender."
-Kevin Young, 2008 National Poetry Series judge