The Big Smoke

The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book excited me more than any other to teach high school English. Just imagine the different ways you could go with an accessible book of poetry about the first black heavy weight champion who went from rags to riches, has gold teeth, reads Shakespeare and goes to the opera, likes fast cars, and has a turbulent relationship with his wife, who is white.
(You could have the kids do research on any of those subjects: race relations, individual fights, who his girlfriends were, the opera, boxing, Mann Act, abuse, suicide...you could have them write biographies of their own in verse, or show pictures of Bellows, or find songs about boxing...open it up to all sorts of interpretations, have them use their talents to do the same. )
 Matejka does an excellent job of capturing the voices of all the different players. By the time I was through with this book, I had a deep sense of who Jack Johnson was, not just what he did. A little more research on the Internet helped me to appreciate the poetry even more. I especially liked "Cannabilism" about Galveston after the Great Storm, "Equality"...a car race that paralleled his fight with Ketchel in the ring "Out of the Bath"...which is an intimate picture of his relationship with Etta; and of course "Fight of the Century"...a round for round description of his fight against the "Great White Hope", Jim Jeffries, and echoes the rhythm of the fight.

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