In his first collection, Matejka challenges notions of propriety, as if breaking silence on long held family secrets. The product of an interracial relationship, Matejka, in turn, makes miscegenation the organizing principle for many of his poems. Part autobiography, part lyric abstraction, this collection gives voice to a multiracial, multiethnic experience that reconciles a range of cultural values.”

—Black Issue 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