The Big Smoke Format: Paperback

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the National Book Award in Poetry--a collection that examines the myth and history of the prizefighter Jack Johnson
 

 

The legendary Jack Johnson (1878-1946) was a true American creation. The child of emancipated slaves, he overcame the violent segregationism of Jim Crow, challenging white boxers--and white America--to become the first African-American heavyweight world champion. The Big Smoke, Adrian Matejka's third work of poetry, follows the fighter's journey from poverty to the most coveted title in sports through the multi-layered voices of Johnson and the white women he brazenly loved. 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.

Adrian Matejka is a graduate of the Southern Illinois University Carbondale MFA program. The author of The Devil's Garden and Mixology, which was a winner of the National Poetry Series. his work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, and Poetry. He teaches creative writing at Indiana University in Bloomington.