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  • Published: 14 September 2021
  • ISBN: 9780143136446
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 96
  • RRP: $35.00
Categories:

Somebody Else Sold the World



The poems in Adrian Matejka's newest and fifth collection, Somebody Else Sold the World, meditate on the ways we exist in an uncontrollable world: in love and its aftermaths, in families that divide themselves, in protest-filled streets, in isolation as routines become obsolete because of lockdown orders and curfews. Somebody Else uses past and future touchstones like pop songs, love notes, and imaginary gossip to illuminate those moments of splendor that persist even in exhaustion. These poems show that there are many possibilities of brightness and hope, even in the middle of pandemics and revolutions.

A resonant new collection on love and persistence from the author of The Big Smoke, a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize

The poems in Adrian Matejka's newest and fifth collection, Somebody Else Sold the World, meditate on the ways we exist in an uncontrollable world: in love and its aftermaths, in families that divide themselves, in protest-filled streets, in isolation as routines become obsolete because of lockdown orders and curfews. Somebody Else uses past and future touchstones like pop songs, love notes, and imaginary gossip to illuminate those moments of splendor that persist even in exhaustion. These poems show that there are many possibilities of brightness and hope, even in the middle of pandemics and revolutions.

  • Published: 14 September 2021
  • ISBN: 9780143136446
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 96
  • RRP: $35.00
Categories:

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Praise for Somebody Else Sold the World

Praise for the work of Adrian Matejka:

"Jack Johnson, the world's first African-American heavyweight champion of the world, comes so boldly to life in these poems one almost wants to duck." --The Boston Globe on The Big Smoke

"With the lean, long jab and agile step of a boxer, Matejka delivers this knockout dramatization of the larger-than-life life of Jack Johnson . . . these poems don't pull no punches." --2013 National Book Award Finalist citation for The Big Smoke

"An imaginative work by a commanding poet who engages the history and mythology of larger-than-life boxer Jack Johnson." --2014 Pulitzer Prize Finalist citation for The Big Smoke

"Matejka offers a fresh set of figures for describing the youth of Black Americans now entering middle age . . . there is a truly astounding wealth of material here, cultural artifacts that add up to an ironclad allegory for the plight of urban African Americans in the 80s, which serves to point the way to where we are now." --The Los Angeles Times on Map to the Stars