The Devil's Garden
Adrian Matejka
Named one of the "best poetry books of 2003" by Black Issues Book Review.
This compelling first book sings the half-white-quarter-Delaware-quarter-black blues, using deft musical allusion and metaphor, and juxtaposing history and autobiography to navigate a tri-racial, tri-cultural heritage.
“Matejka challenges notions of propriety, as if breaking silence on long-held family secrets….a smart and engaging debut.”
—Black Issues Book Review
“Adrian Matejka’s garden breeds a formidable range of voices and explorations, all in one groove, both sensual and evocative of the borders of identity where hoodoo turns to music.”
—Crab Orchard Review
"Using jazz and blues rhythms with telling allusions to Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and Billie Holiday, Matejka fashions a powerful autobiography in verse....Highly recommended for all larger collections."
—Library Journal
"Matejka’s first book attempts to contain not only the multitudes, but what his culture wants to convince him are the contradictions he embodies. Freewheeling lyric improvisations and straight-ahead narratives forge a space in language where opposites co-exist."
—Black Issues Book Review
"The Devil’s Garden meets at the crossroads of risky possibility—real and magical. With jazz burning in the engine, each curve in Adrian Matejka’s stunning imagination is taken with hard-earned, skillful grace. Get ready to travel in the mind and the body."
—Yusef Komunyakaa
"Reading Adrian Matejka's amazing debut, I was left with the feeling that American Poetry was at last beginning to catch up with early 21st century American life. He has written the first serious songs from a world that's about to make itself felt and known."
—Cornelius Eady
"Adrian Matejka plays the language like a horn, with a cool inventiveness and bravura phrasing, yet his poems are as notable for their humanity as their flourishes and riffs at the borders of expression. His singular gift is to write outside the usual habits of communication and yet to deliver again and again the inside story, the testament of a life."
—Rodney Jones
about the author
Born in Nüremburg, Germany, Adrian Matejka is a recent graduate of the Southern Illinois University MFA program. He is a Cave Canem fellow and his poems have appeared in Clakamas, Crab Orchard Review, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review and Sou'wester among others.
Author photo by Edna Matejka
two poems from the devil's garden
