Adrian Matejka: Mixology

Mixology is a text unlike others that we have encountered thus far, the poetry contained inside is dense, intricate, eloquent, and contains references to pop culture icons such as flavor flav or Denzel Washington. The Poems inside act like works of Larry Levis where much of the references need to be looked up (with Wikipedia or Google) to fully understand what the poet is trying to accomplish. A good example of this is found in the poem Seven Days of Falling, if the reader doesn’t know who Danny Larusso (the star of karate kid who went on to be a pro skateboarder) or Juan Valdez (Columbian coffee advertisement person) or where Zanzibar is, etc. then the reader will not fully understand the poems intent. Unlike levis the references in mixology are not high brow poetry and Greek myth references, they are hip hop and pop culture references that comment on Matejka’s life experiences in the latter half of the 20^th century. German born raised in America with mixed parents (one white one black) Matejka was harassed and felt out of place early in his life (Hispanics would make fun of him for looking Hispanic but having a German accent, etc.) this and other events that happened to him (due to his mixed race) resulted in one of the major themes of mixology being race. The term Mulatto refers to his mixed race and appears many times throughout the text both as the “in your face” subject of the poem, and as the insinuated subject of the poems.

The poetry in mixology is flowing like a rap song, it is dense like a Levis poem and it is on the subject matter of race. However there is another aspect of the poetry that I have yet to discuss and it is a matter of great importance. The poetry is incredibly urban yet at the same time it is unbelievably literal and poetic (even though you could rap certain verses of the poetry it is still poetry and not a rap song, and as poetry the poems are incredibly successful at being, they tell stories of the human condition, how it feels to be different, growing up etc.) Mixology’s greatest success is the poems ability to be both flowing and eloquent but at the same time represent subject matter that is real to the poet. I really enjoyed this text and was surprised to find dense rich poetry that used hip hop and pop culture references to get its point across.