Jake Adam York

{{infobox writer | name = Jake Adam York | image = Jake Adam York.jpg | imagesize = | alt = | caption = York reading one of his poems in March 2007 | pseudonym = | birth_date = {{Birth date|1972|8|10}} | birth_place = West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S. | death_date = {{Death date and age|2012|12|16|1972|8|10}} | death_place = Denver, Colorado, U.S. | resting_place = | occupation = Poet, professor, editor | education = | alma_mater = BA, Auburn University,<br />MFA, Ph.D. Cornell University | period = | genre = Poetry | subject = | movement = | notableworks = | spouse = Sarah Skeen | awards = {{awd |Elixir Prize in Poetry |2005}} {{awd |Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Awards |2007}} {{awd | Colorado Book Award |2008}} {{awd | National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship |2012}} {{awd | Witter Bynner Fellowship |2014}} | signature = | signature_alt = | website = {{URL|jakeadamyork.com}} | portaldisp = }}

'''Jake Adam York''' (August 10, 1972{{spaced ndash}}December 16, 2012) was an American poet. 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; and ''Persons 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 the Witter Bynner Fellowship by the U.S. Poet Laureate.

==Life== York was born in West Palm Beach, Florida, in 1972 to David and Linda York, who worked respectively as a steelworker and history teacher.<ref name="southernspaces.org">[http://www.southernspaces.org/2010/jake-adam-york-interviews-natasha-trethewey Jake Adam York Interviews Natasha Trethewey], Southern Spaces, Emory University, accessed December 17, 2012.</ref> Shortly after York's birth, his parents moved with him back to Alabama, where five generations of their families had lived.<ref name="therumpus.net">[http://therumpus.net/2012/12/poetry-wire-remembering-jake-adam-york-1972-2012/ DAVID BIESPIEL, "POETRY WIRE: REMEMBERING JAKE ADAM YORK, 1972-2012"], ''The Rumpus'', 17 December 2012. Accessed December 17, 2012.</ref>

York grew up with his brother Joe in Gadsden, Alabama, where the family lived in a rural house.<ref name="denverpost.com">"[http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22216151/jake-adam-york-poet-who-chronicled-civil-rights Jake Adam York, Poet Who Chronicled Civil Rights Movement, Dies at 40]" by Claire Martin, ''The Denver Post'', 18 December 2012.</ref> York was a big fan of rap music, including LL Cool J and Run DMC, and covered their joint bedroom in posters of his favorite rappers.<ref name="denverpost.com"/>

York graduated from Southside High School in Gadsden in 1990. That year he started at Auburn University. Initially an architecture student, he switched majors to English after attending a poetry reading with R. T. Smith, who was the university's Alumni Writer in Residence at the time.<ref>"[https://www.towncreekpoetry.com/SPR07/JAY%20INTERVIEW.htm Interview with Featured Poet Jake Adam York]," Town Creek Poetry, spring 2007, accessed 2/15/2025.</ref> York eventually earned a B.A. in English. He received his M.F.A. and Ph.D. in creative writing and English literature from Cornell University.<ref name="southernspaces.org"/>

==Career and editing==

York worked as an associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver, where he was an editor for ''Copper 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 at Kenyon College. During the 2011–2012 academic year, he was a visiting faculty scholar at Emory University's James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference.

In addition, York served as a founding editor for ''storySouth'' and as a contributing editor for ''Shenandoah'' magazine.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v3n2/poetry/york_ja/index.htm|title=Jake Adam York, Blackbird|website=blackbird.vcu.edu}}</ref> He also founded the online journal ''Thicket'', which focused on Alabama literature.

In 2005, when fiction writer Brad Vice was accused of plagiarism in his short story collection ''The Bear Bryant Funeral Train'', York took the lead in defending the author.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.storysouth.com/comment/2005/12/taking_it_personal.html|title= Taking It Personal: The Politics of Advocacy|last=York|first= Jake Adam|work=storySouth|date=December 5, 2005}}</ref> Vice was accused of plagiarizing part of one story from the 1934 book ''Stars Fell on Alabama'' by Carl 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 journal ''Thicket''. 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 using allusion in his story, not plagiarism. York said that, according to his own analysis, Vice did not violate copyright law.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.storysouth.com/comment/2005/11/fell_in_alabama_brad_vices_tus.html|title= Fell In Alabama: Brad Vice's Tuscaloosa Night|first=Jake Adam|last=York|work=storySouth|accessdate=6 November 2005}}</ref>

Vice's collection was republished two years later.<ref>"THE STRANGE CASE OF BRAD VICE: In defense of a destroyed treasure" by Michelle Richmond, ''The Oxford American'', Issue 55.</ref> York wrote one of the introductions to this new edition of ''The Bear Bryant Funeral Train''.<ref>"[http://www.pw.org/content/brad_vice_finds_new_publisher_his_controversial_story_collection Brad Vice Finds a New Publisher for His Controversial Story Collection]," ''Poets and Writers'', 31 May 2007; accessed December 19, 2012.</ref>

== Poetry ==

York wrote what has been called "poetry of witness," in particular "to elegize and memorialize the martyrs of the Civil Rights movement.<ref>"[https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v12n1/nonfiction/williams%20s/york%20page.shtml Man of Fire: The Poetry of Jake Adam York]{{Dead link|date=September 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}" by Susan Settlemyre Williams, Blackbird, spring 2013, volume 12, number 1.</ref> His poetry appeared in journals and magazines including ''The New York Times Magazine,<ref name="NYT">"[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/magazine/abide.html Abide]" by Jake Adam York, ''The New York Times Magazine'', Feb. 22, 2015, Page 70.</ref> The New Orleans Review'', ''The Oxford American'', ''Poetry Daily'', ''Quarterly West'', and ''The 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's ''Murder 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".<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.terrain.org/reviews/18/murder_ballads.htm|title=Poetry in Context, in Craft|last=Buntin|first=Simmons B.|journal=Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments|accessdate=23 April 2016|volume=18|date=Spring–Summer 2006}}</ref>

His sophomore book, ''A Murmuration of Starlings'', won the 2008 Colorado Book Award in Poetry<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.coloradohumanities.org/content/2009-colorado-book-award-winners|title=2009 Colorado Book Award Winners|year=2009|publisher=Colorado Humanities|accessdate=21 August 2014|archive-date=21 August 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140821185044/http://www.coloradohumanities.org/content/2009-colorado-book-award-winners|url-status=dead}}</ref> 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 the Civil Rights Movement.<ref name="denverpost.com"/>

In 2009, York was the University of Mississippi's Summer Poet in Residence.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://mfaenglish.olemiss.edu/jake-adam-york/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150110163617/http://mfaenglish.olemiss.edu/jake-adam-york/|url-status=dead|archive-date=January 10, 2015|title=Jake Adam York|publisher=University of Mississippi|accessdate=23 April 2016}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Poet Jake Adam York, 40, has died">"[http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-poet-jake-adam-york-age-40-has-died-20121217,0,7413904.story Poet Jake Adam York, 40, has died]" by Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times Jacket Copy website, December 17, 2012. Accessed December 17, 2012.</ref>

His fourth book, ''Abide'', was completed in 2012 shortly before his death<ref>[http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?id=1559&fulltext=1 Jon Tribble, "The Air We Make Together: The Life and Poetry of Jake Adam York"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130408212621/http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?id=1559&fulltext=1 |date=2013-04-08 }} ''Los Angeles Review of Books'', 07 April 2013.</ref> and published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2014.<ref>"[http://www.usi.edu/sir/poetry-equals-amk/jake-adam-york-tribute.aspx A Tribute to Jake Adam York] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140316214522/http://www.usi.edu/sir/poetry-equals-amk/jake-adam-york-tribute.aspx |date=2014-03-16 }}" by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, Southern Indiana Review, accessed May 9, 2013.</ref><ref>"[http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2014/02/jake-adam-yorks-abide-reviewed-at-the-rumpus/ Jake Adam York’s Abide Reviewed at The Rumpus]" by Harriet Staff, The Poetry Foundation, accessed March 16, 2014.</ref> ''Abide'' was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.<ref name=nbcc2014>{{cite web|url=http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/national-book-critics-circle-announces-its-finalists-for-publishing-year-20|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150122120832/http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/national-book-critics-circle-announces-its-finalists-for-publishing-year-20|url-status=dead|archive-date=January 22, 2015|title=National Book Critics Circle Announces Finalists for Publishing Year 2014|date=January 19, 2015|publisher=National Book Critics Circle|accessdate=January 29, 2015}}</ref> In 2014 York was also posthumously named as the recipient of the Witter Bynner Fellowship by the U.S. Poet Laureate.<ref name=Witter>[https://www.loc.gov/poetry/prize-fellow/bynner.html >Witter Bynner Fellowships], The Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress, LOC website, accessed March 16, 2014.</ref>

In honor of York's poetry and life, Copper Nickel and Milkweed Editions run the Jake Adam York Prize for a first or second poetry collection. The winning books are published by Milkweed Editions.<ref>[http://copper-nickel.org/bookprize/ Jake Adam York Prize], Copper Nickel, accessed 5/30/2022.</ref>

==Reception== Natasha Trethewey described ''A Murmuration of Starlings'' as

<blockquote>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|date=August 2014}}</blockquote>

According to Adam Palumbo in ''The Rumpus'', <blockquote>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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://therumpus.net/2011/08/one-of-us-is-already-gone/|title=One of Us is Already Gone|last=Palumbo|first=Adam|date=24 August 2011|work=The Rumpus|accessdate=23 April 2016}}</ref></blockquote>

== Death == York died on December 16, 2012,<ref name="Poet Jake Adam York, 40, has died"/><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2012/12/jake-adam-york-.html|title=Jake Adam York (1972 - 2012)|website=The Best American Poetry}}</ref> from a stroke.<ref name="therumpus.net"/><ref name="NYT"/>

==Awards and honors==

* 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award (Poetry) finalist for ''Abide''<ref name=nbcc2014/> * 2014 Witter Bynner Fellowship<ref name=Witter/> * 2012 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship * 2008 Colorado Book Award in Poetry

==Selected publications== * ''Abide'' (Southern Illinois Press, 2014) * ''Persons Unknown'' (Southern Illinois Press, 2010) * ''A Murmuration of Starlings'' (Southern Illinois University Press, 2008) * ''Murder Ballads'' (Elixir Press, 2005) * ''The Architecture of Address: The Monument and Public Speech in American Poetry'' (Routledge, 2005)

==References== {{reflist}}

==External links== *{{official website|http://www.jakeadamyork.com/}} *[https://rose.library.emory.edu/ Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library], Emory University: [https://findingaids.library.emory.edu/documents/york1376/ Jake Adam York Papers, 1972-2012.]

{{DEFAULTSORT:York, Jake Adam}} Category:1972 births Category:Auburn University alumni Category:Cornell University alumni Category:University of Colorado Denver faculty Category:2012 deaths Category:People from West Palm Beach, Florida Category:People from Gadsden, Alabama Category:Poets from Florida Category:Poets from Alabama Category:21st-century American poets