Jake Adam York | |
|---|---|
 York reading one of his poems in March 2007 | |
| Born | (1972-08-10)August 10, 1972 West Palm Beach,Florida, U.S. |
| Died | December 16, 2012(2012-12-16) (aged 40) |
| Occupation | Poet, professor, editor |
| Alma mater | BA,Auburn University, MFA, Ph.D.Cornell University |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Notable awards | Elixir Prize in Poetry 2005 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Awards 2007 Colorado Book Award 2008 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship 2012 Witter Bynner Fellowship 2014 |
| Spouse | Sarah Skeen |
| Website | |
| jakeadamyork | |
Jake Adam York (August 10, 1972 – December 16, 2012) was an Americanpoet. He published three books of poetry before his death:Murder Ballads, which won the 2005 Elixir Prize in Poetry;A Murmuration of Starlings, which won the 2008 Colorado Book Award in Poetry; andPersons Unknown, an editor's selection in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry. A fourth book,Abide, was released posthumously, in 2014. That same year he was also named a posthumous recipient of theWitter Bynner Fellowship by theU.S. Poet Laureate.
York was born inWest Palm Beach, Florida, in 1972 to David and Linda York, who worked respectively as a steelworker and history teacher.[1] Shortly after York's birth, his parents moved with him back toAlabama, where five generations of their families had lived.[2]
York grew up with his brother Joe inGadsden, Alabama, where the family lived in a rural house.[3] York was a big fan ofrap music, includingLL Cool J andRun DMC, and covered their joint bedroom in posters of his favorite rappers.[3]
York graduated from Southside High School in Gadsden in 1990. That year he started atAuburn University. Initially anarchitecture student, he switched majors to English after attending a poetry reading withR. T. Smith, who was the university's Alumni Writer in Residence at the time.[4] York eventually earned a B.A. in English. He received his M.F.A. and Ph.D. in creative writing and English literature fromCornell University.[1]
York worked as an associate professor at theUniversity of Colorado Denver, where he was an editor forCopper Nickel, a nationally recognized student literary journal which he had helped found. In the spring of 2011, York was the Richard B. Thomas Visiting Professor of Creative Writing atKenyon College. During the 2011–2012 academic year, he was a visiting faculty scholar atEmory University's James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference.
In addition, York served as a founding editor forstorySouth and as a contributing editor forShenandoah magazine.[5] He also founded the online journalThicket, which focused on Alabama literature.
In 2005, when fiction writerBrad Vice was accused ofplagiarism in hisshort story collectionThe Bear Bryant Funeral Train, York took the lead in defending the author.[6] Vice was accused of plagiarizing part of one story from the 1934 bookStars Fell on Alabama byCarl Carmer.
York noted that Vice had allowed the short story and the similar section from Carmer's original book to be published side by side in the literary journalThicket. To York, Vice thus "implicitly acknowledges the relationship (and) allows the evidence to be made public". York added that doing this allowed the readers to enter the "intertextual space in which (Vice) has worked", and Vice was usingallusion in his story, notplagiarism. York said that, according to his own analysis, Vice did not violate copyright law.[7]
Vice's collection was republished two years later.[8] York wrote one of the introductions to this new edition ofThe Bear Bryant Funeral Train.[9]
York wrote what has been called "poetry of witness," in particular "to elegize and memorialize the martyrs of theCivil Rights movement.[10] His poetry appeared in journals and magazines includingThe New York Times Magazine,[11] The New Orleans Review,The Oxford American,Poetry Daily,Quarterly West, andThe Southern Review.
York's first book of poems,Murder Ballads, won the 2005 Elixir Prize in Poetry. According to one reviewer, "Context matters, but good poetry is not bound by it. Jake Adam York'sMurder Ballads — a collection of 35 poems in four parts, published by Elixir Press — is a book where context matters. But the finely crafted poems—what Shenandoah editor R.T. Smith rightly calls York's "demanding poetic"—are not bound by that context".[12]
His sophomore book,A Murmuration of Starlings, won the 2008 Colorado Book Award in Poetry[13] and was published through the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry. His third book,Persons Unknown, was published in 2010 as an editor's selection in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry by Southern Illinois University Press. Both books chronicled and eulogized the martyrs of theCivil Rights Movement.[3]
In 2009, York was theUniversity of Mississippi's Summer Poet in Residence.[14] On February 14, 2010, York was awarded the Third Coast Poetry Prize. He had already received a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in poetry.[15]
His fourth book,Abide, was completed in 2012 shortly before his death[16] and published bySouthern Illinois University Press in 2014.[17][18]Abide was named a finalist for theNational Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.[19] In 2014 York was also posthumously named as the recipient of theWitter Bynner Fellowship by theU.S. Poet Laureate.[20]
In honor of York's poetry and life, Copper Nickel andMilkweed Editions run the Jake Adam York Prize for a first or second poetry collection. The winning books are published by Milkweed Editions.[21]
Natasha Trethewey describedA Murmuration of Starlings as
a fierce, beautiful, necessary book. Fearless in their reckoning, these poems resurrect contested histories and show us that the past—with its troubled beauty, its erasures, and its violence—weighs upon us all . . . a murmuration so that we don't forget, so that no one disappears into history.[citation needed]
According to Adam Palumbo inThe Rumpus,
York's study into the Civil Rights Movement is not meant to be an indictment of the American consciousness; rather, he strives to present the stories of these persons unknown so that his reader cannot help but reflect on this murderous chapter in American history. He never sinks into oblique facts, but he does not forget them, either. He never ignores the simple truth that he is writing poetry, and crafts a collection that is moving and substantial.Persons Unknown is a necessary addition to the oeuvre of civil rights literature and the conversation it (still) invokes.[22]
York died on December 16, 2012,[15][23] from astroke.[2][11]
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