Murder Ballads

by Jake Adam York

Poetry. "Rather than introspection, sensationalism, or mere entertainment, remembering becomes an act of engagement, one that propels the poet toward a fierce intellectual and moral reckoning. And we in turn are held rapt by the lyric enactments of this poet who takes dangerous materials into his hands; who stubbornly pulls at the poisonous sumac obscuring a furnace's ruins; who probes old wound, transfiguring them into new patterns. MURDER BALLADS is wondrous and essential reading, a compelling debut"—Jane Satterfield.

Genres: Poetry, Southern Gothic

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Jake Adam York is the author of Murder Ballads (2005), selected by Jane Satterfield for the Fifth Annual Elixir Press Awards Judge’s Prize, A Murmuration of Starlings, selected by Cathy Song for the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry (2008), and Persons Unknown, forthcoming as an Editor's Selection in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry (2010).

His poems have appeared in Shenandoah, Oxford American, Greensboro Review, Gulf Coast, New Orleans Review, Quarterly West, Diagram, Octopus, Southern Review, Poetry Daily, and other journals as well as in the anthologies Visiting Walt (Iowa University Press, 2003) and Digerati (Three Candles, 2006).

York is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Colorado Denver, where he directs an undergraduate Creative Writing program and produces Copper Nickel with his students.

Reviews

[Jake Adam]

This is my first book of poems. Amazingly, I don't hate it yet.

[Lynn]

I vowed to read more poetry in 2013 (at least one a month). So, I'm a little behind. I bought this book because I read that he died recently. That's a little depressing, I know. I read about this book, and found the premise intriguing.
I like how the poems in the book mostly focus on murders of slaves in Alabama, but some also are about the author, or about iron factories.
York is very adept at imagery and mixing images of the natural world with real or invented memory. I enjoyed the blend of language. I like how the poems always felt grounded in the real, the political, the body.

[Avathoir]

My father taught Jake York.

This is not something that I say to brag. It's more something that helps me hold on to the fact that this collection, which is really, really, really good, has a very strong resonance with me. It reminds me of the Alabama boyhood I had so many years ago, the muggy nights, the history that blazed every place your turned (How young I was, when I stepped in the Birmingham Church where four little girls were blown to pieces. I knew it was a sacred place, but if I stepped in there again would I collapse from being aware of the true significance?), the simple realization you are in the modern world but also out of time. I can't really pick a favorite poem. They seem to blend in to one. It's a brilliant work, this single 80 some page piece.

Now, it is 2016. Jake York has been dead for four years.

He was my father's student, and so in some way that makes him a brother to me. If nothing else, York has made me more aware of my own history as placed in the history of his poems. For that alone, he deserves my admiration.

[Heather]

After making my way through the rest of his body of work, I finally circled back around to Jake Adam York's debut collection, Murder Ballads. These poems are as vivid and concerned with music as his later work, and in the book's final section York hits his stride and reveals the poet he is to become. It's fascinating to sit with his first book after reading Abide, but it only makes the loss of one of poetry's sharpest and most important voices even harder. I still can't believe we lost him.

[Talia]

I love how this book is focused and divided. Compartments of thought. York has a great sense of freshenss. He describes the sound of burn, of Orion's warble. And he tells some interesting untold stories of American history.

[Terri]

I have no idea about this author or this book other than 1. He wrote an introduction for some documentary about BBQ, and 2. I like the title.

[Arianne]

I had to add this so you all could look this up in your own neck of the woods- this is a friend of mine here in Denver. He's a great guy, and on top of that, a great writer.