Remembering Jake Adam York (1972–2012)

Jake Adam York during an interview with Natasha Trethewey, 2008.

Jake Adam York served faithfully on the Southern Spaces editorial board. His insight, enthusiasm, and generosity will be missed.

Jake Adam York was a poet of great vision and a deeply humane intelligence. His work to chart the history of his native South and the civil rights movement—its violence and erasures—represents a brave reclamation and reckoning: a reclamation rooted in the absolute necessity to articulate, in the elegant language of poetry, a fuller version of our American story. Beyond the sheer beauty and technical skill of his poems is a profound intervention into our ongoing conversations about race and social justice. His body of work represents a bold and necessary challenge to our historical amnesia, making him one of our most indispensable American poets.

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Recommended Resources

Books

York, Jake Adam. The Architecture of Address: The Monument and Public Speech in American Poetry. New York: Routledge, 2004.

———. Murder Ballads. Denver, CO: Elixir Press, 2005.

———. A Murmuration of Starlings. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, 2008.

———. Persons Unknown. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, 2010.

Online Publications

Donovan, Gregory. "An Interview with Jake Adam York." Blackbird," 4, no. 1 (Spring 2005). http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v4n1/features/york_ja_100105/.

York, Jake Adam. "At Cornwall Furnace," "Breakfast," "Cannon," "Elegy for Little Girls," "In the Magic City," "Iron," "Janney," "Landscape in Dolomite and Ferric Oxide," "Looking for Cane Creek Furnace," "Midnight, Furnace, Wind," and "Interview with Featured Poet Jake Adam York." Town Creek Poetry 1, no. 1 (Spring 2007). http://www.towncreekpoetry.com/SPR07/toc.htm.

———. "Aubade," "Doppler," "What You Wish For," "Under," "Fell," "Heat," and "Regret/Egret." H_NGM_N no. 5. http://www.h-ngm-n.com/h_ngm_n-5/Jake-Adam-York.html.

———. "Bunk Richardson," "Consolation," "On Tallaseehatchee Creek," and "Vigil." Blackbird 3, no. 2 (Fall 2004). http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v3n2/poetry/york_ja/.

———. "The Crowd He Becomes." DIAGRAM 7, no. 2. http://thediagram.com/7_2/york.html.

———. "Diphthong," "Virga," and "Radiotherapy." Typo Magazine, no. 1. http://www.typomag.com/issue01/york.html.

———. "Elegy for James Knox." DIAGRAM 3, no. 2. http://thediagram.com/3_2/york.html.

———. "At Liberty," "Substantiation," "For Reverend James Reeb," and "For Lamar Smith." Blackbird 5, no. 2 (Fall 2006). http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v5n2/poetry/york_j/.

———. "Interferometry." Greensboro Review, no. 71 (Spring 2002). http://www.greensbororeview.org/spring-2002/interferometry.html.

———. Legba Says." Octopus Magazine, no. 1 (Summer 2003). http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue01/Templates/jake_adam_york.html

———. "Panoramic: Landscape With Repeating Figures," "Double Exposure," and "Elegy for Little Girls." Terrain.org, no. 17 (Fall 2005). http://www.terrain.org/poetry/17/york.htm.

———. "Signal." DIAGRAM 2, no.3. http://thediagram.com/2_3/york.html.

———. "Still" and "Bye Bye Blackbird/Blackbird Bye Bye." Shampoo, no. 13 (August 2002). http://www.shampoopoetry.com/ShampooThirteen/york.html.

———. "Walt Whitman in Alabama," "Hush," "Negatives," and "York." Colorado Poets Center. http://www.coloradopoetscenter.org/poets/york_jake-adam/walt-whitman.html.