WEBVTT

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Hello.

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Hello.

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Hi.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Welcome to the Poetry Center.

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I'm Hannah Ensor.

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I coordinate the reading
and lecture series here.

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Tonight, we're lucky to be
joined by Adrian Matejka, who

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will explore intersections
of poetry and spectacle

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in our contemporary
US-American moment.

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Matejka's most recent book,
The Big Smoke-- do we have it?

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[LAUGHTER]

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Thank you.

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Eh eh.

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I feel a little bit like
Pat Sajak and Vanna White.

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It's like--

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So The Big Smoke was awarded the
2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

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and was a finalist for the
2013 National Book Award

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and the 2014 Pulitzer Prize.

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The book takes as its subject
and its predominant speaker

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the boxer Jack Johnson,
once the most famous athlete

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in the country whose
remarkable and complicated life

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spanned from 1878 to 1946.

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Reviewer Gabrielle Calvocoressi
writes about The Big Smoke,

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quote, "Through the virtuosic
interplay of voices,

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Matejka forces us to
interrogate our own complicity

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in making histories
that focus on the prize

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fights and the flashy cars while
ignoring and perhaps abetting

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the intimate struggles and
losses, the cruelties occurring

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in the places we
call home that make

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the rifts in our lives and our
country deepen," end quote.

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So I was thinking about this.

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What do these
complicities look like?

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What does it mean when we're
complicit in, say, violence?

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In rape culture?

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In ethical, religious, moral,
or legal transgressions

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against other humans
or against ourselves?

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Why do we avert our eyes
or look and not care?

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Is it in the name
sometimes of industry?

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Of entertainment,
leisure, and pleasure?

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Of fatigue or exhaustion?

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For contemporary case
studies in complicity,

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in case you're
having a hard time

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placing this abstract
notion, we could turn, say,

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to Ray Rice, Adrian
Peterson, Ben Roethlisberger,

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Jameis Winston, Peyton Manning.

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We could turn to
ongoing concussions

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in professional, in "amateur,"
and in youth athletics.

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To Chris Brown, to Kesha's
current legal battles,

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to the Sony hack,
to leaked nudes

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and tapes of various kinds.

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As Matejka points out in a
recent interview about The Big

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Smoke, quote,
"There's a discussion

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that needs to be had
about domestic violence.

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This isn't something
that just happened

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with Ray Rice or Greg Hardy.

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It's not a contemporary
athlete problem.

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It's not even an
athlete problem.

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It's a systemic and
societal problem

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that's been going on since
well before Jack Johnson,"

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end quote.

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History is reclaimed and
aired out in The Big Smoke

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almost as an injunction
against cultural amnesia.

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Part of this airing out,
though, involves a refusal

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to throw Johnson under an
ahistorical, self-righteously

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fueled bus.

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Pushing on the Jack
Johnson myth, it turns out,

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opens up and out to a world
beyond one man with echoes

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into the deep past, the
recent past, and the present.

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Writing a book like this and
writing it for eight years

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isn't the kind of
work I imagine you

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can be inside of without first
being attracted, being a fan.

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And perhaps what The
Big Smoke suggests

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to us is a new kind of
fandom, one in which affection

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and criticism are not mutually
exclusive, one in which

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a moment in history,
including the one

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we're occupying right
now, February 25, 2016,

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contains complex networks
of contexts, questions,

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and pressures.

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The anti-amnesia
impulse in The Big Smoke

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involves holding it all at once.

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This might be how we
can correct the record.

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In addition to the honors
that The Big Smoke earned,

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Adrian Matejka has also
received fellowships and awards

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from the Illinois Arts Council,
the Guggenheim Foundation,

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and the Lannan Foundation.

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He was a finalist for an
NAACP Image Award for his book

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Mixology, which was a
National Poetry Series

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winner selected by Kevin Young.

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They're doing it again.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And published by
Penguin Books in 2009.

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Two graphic novels
are in the works, one

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continuing Jack
Johnson's stories and one

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on 1980s hip hop.

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His next book
Collectible Blacks,

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which Matejka describes as being
about astronomy and being poor,

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will be out in April of next
year from Penguin Random House.

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Please help us welcome
Adrian Matejka.

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[APPLAUSE]