Jake Adam York's Books

Persons Unknown

By: Jake Adam York

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In this stunning continuation to the poetry collection A Murmuration of Starlings, dedicated to those who lost their lives during the Civil Rights movement, Jake Adam York presents another set of searing portraits of these martyrs—men whose murders haunt America’s history. These elegiac and documentary poems seek justice and understanding for such sacrifices as Mack Charles Parker, lynched in Mississippi in 1959, his body disposed of in the waters of the Pearl River; Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, abducted into the depths of the Homochitto Forest, beaten, and drowned in the Mississippi by the Ku Klux Klan; and Medgar Evers, dedicated activist, whose assassination outside his home in 1963 sent shockwaves throughout the South. Drawing on photographs, articles, legal documents, and other cultural artifacts, York deftly weaves history and memory into a lyrical reckoning for these often-overlooked victims of the bitter struggle for Civil Rights. A Natural History of Mississippi A blade of rust from the ocean and from the air a rumor that corrodes the earth in tongues, lichen, moss, magnolia, until each gossip’s true. Things go this way, each green repeating its fact of sun and wind and rain, its dialect, its blade, while beneath each leaf a quiet cuts between the veins. Laced, pale wings open to learn the particular weather, the place or part of speech that will darken and give them a name. So each sugar furls to burn and bitter against whatever mouths might swallow, each skin becomes the history of its harbor, another word for here. This hatch of bark and shade hangs like a photograph of all it covers, so perfect, so still, its edges blur, then disappear.

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113

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SIU Press

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ISBN 10

0809385783

ISBN 13

9780809385782

A Murmuration of Starlings

By: Jake Adam York

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A Murmuration of Starlings

By: Jake Adam York

A Murmuration of Starlings elegizes the martyrs of the civil rights movement, whose names are inscribed on the stone table of the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. Individually, Jake Adam York’s poems are elegies for individuals; collectively, they consider the violence of a racist culture and the determination to resist that racism. York follows Sun Ra, a Birmingham jazz musician whose response to racial violence was to secede from planet Earth, considers the testimony in the trial of J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant for the murder of Emmet Till in 1955, and recreates events of Selma, Alabama, in 1965. Throughout the collection, an invasion of starlings imagesthe racial hatred and bloodshed. While the 1950s spawned violence, the movement in the early 1960s transformed the language of brutality and turned the violence against the violent, says York. So, the starlings, first produced by violence, become instruments of resistance. York’s collection responds to and participates inrecent movements to find and punish the perpetrators of the crimes that defined the civil rights movement. A Murmuration of Starlings participates in the search for justice, satisfaction, and closure.

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100

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SIU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0809328372

ISBN 13

9780809328376

Abide

By: Jake Adam York

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Abide

By: Jake Adam York

Winner, 2015 Colorado Book Award Finalist, 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award In the years leading up to his recent passing, Alabama poet Jake Adam York set out on a journey to elegize the 126 martyrs of the civil rights movement, murdered in the years between 1954 and 1968. Abide is the stunning follow-up to York’s earlier volumes, a memorial in verse for those fallen. From Birmingham to Okemah, Memphis to Houston, York’s poems both mourn and inspire in their quest for justice, ownership, and understanding. Within are anthems to John Earl Reese, a sixteen-year-old shot by Klansmen through the window of a café in Mayflower, Texas, where he was dancing in 1955; to victims lynched on the Oklahoma prairies; to the four children who perished in the Birmingham church bombing of 1963; and to families who saw the white hoods of the Klan illuminated by burning crosses. Juxtaposed with these horrors are more loving images of the South: the aroma of greens simmering on the stove, “tornado-strong” houses built by loved ones long gone, and the power of rivers “dark as roux.” Throughout these lush narratives, York resurrects the ghosts of Orpheus, Sun Ra, Howlin’ Wolf, Thelonious Monk, Woody Guthrie, and more, summoning blues, jazz, hip-hop, and folk musicians for performances of their “liberation music” that give special meaning to the tales of the dead. In the same moment that Abide memorializes the fallen, it also raises the ethical questions faced by York during this, his life’s work: What does it mean to elegize? What does it mean to elegize martyrs? What does it mean to disturb the symmetries of the South’s racial politics or its racial poetics? A bittersweet elegy for the poet himself, Abide is as subtle and inviting as the whisper of a record sleeve, the gasp of the record needle, beckoning us to heed our history.

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ISBN 10

0809333287

ISBN 13

9780809333288

A Murmuration of Starlings

By: Jake Adam York

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A Murmuration of Starlings

By: Jake Adam York

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100

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SIU Press

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ISBN 10

0809328372

ISBN 13

9780809328376

The Architecture of Address

The Monument and Public Speech in American Poetry

By: Jake Adam York

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The Architecture of Address

The Monument and Public Speech in American Poetry

By: Jake Adam York

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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246

Publisher

Psychology Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

041597058X

ISBN 13

9780415970587

Persons Unknown

By: Jake Adam York

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Persons Unknown

By: Jake Adam York

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113

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SIU Press

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ISBN 10

0809385783

ISBN 13

9780809385782

The Architecture of Address

The Monument and Public Speech in American Poetry

By: Jake Adam York

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The Architecture of Address

The Monument and Public Speech in American Poetry

By: Jake Adam York

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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246

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Psychology Press

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ISBN 10

041597058X

ISBN 13

9780415970587

Abide

By: Jake Adam York

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Abide

By: Jake Adam York

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0809333287

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9780809333288

The Last Integrationist

By: Jake Lamar

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The Last Integrationist

By: Jake Lamar

Jake Lamar's combustible, visionary, provocative novel explores the ambiguities of race in America as the first black politician with a real shot at the White House fights for his political career and, ultimately, his own soul.

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Page Count

368

Publisher

Crown

Published Date

ISBN 10

0517593750

ISBN 13

9780517593752

Book's by Jake Adam York

Persons Unknown

Persons Unknown

A Murmuration of Starlings

A Murmuration of Starlings

Abide

Abide

A Murmuration of Starlings

A Murmuration of Starlings

The Architecture of Address

The Architecture of Address

Persons Unknown

Persons Unknown

The Architecture of Address

The Architecture of Address

Abide

Abide

The Last Integrationist

The Last Integrationist

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