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Memories of the Phonograph
"Don't
judge a book by its cover"...unless it has a phonograph on
it
By Doug Boilesen 2019
One of my favorite things to do
is to wander through a library and see what catches my eye.
Our local library has shelves where the staff pick out books,
usually by some theme or current event, and display them so
that you see their covers.
Recently on a shelf that was celebrating
Colorado writers was a book of poetry by Jake Adam York titled
Abide.
It immediately caught my attention.
A bird is positioned on a turntable
with its beak pointing into the grooves of a record to function
as a stylus.
In the world of art the 'beak'
and other objects have previously been creatively depicted as
ways for sound waves to be seemingly played, e.g., Fred Flintstone
and Woody Woodpecker used bird beaks for their record players
as does EMEK in his 2003 poster "Phono Bird"; Hot
Stuff "The Little Devil" used his 'devil tail' for
a stylus, etc.
In the history of sound recording
there is also a connection. When Leon Scott patented his phonautograph
in 1857 (an invention which he would use for the visual study
of sound waves and not the actual reproduction of the voice)
Scott used a "recording bristle from a pig or bird"
to scratch "the surface of the blackened paper to make
a visual tracing of the voice." This was the beginning
of the recording of sound. (1)
But the meaningful thing about
this particular discovery for me was inside the cover. On those
pages I found poems that made me want to know more about who
York was and what he was writing about. The Abide poems
led me to investigate his 'project' which was the body of his
work. Inspired by the Civil Rights Memorial he called his project
Inspirations for Air. (2)
Jake Adam York is not a poet that
I had heard of and his untimely death in 2012 at the age of
forty is clearly the loss of an important voice in our world.
David Wojahn said this of York:
"Jake Adam York was the finest
elegist of this generation."
Natasha Trethewey, United States
Poet Laureate, wrote the following:
In his body of work, poems of
sheer beauty, grace, precision of image, and technical skill,
we find a profound intervention into our ongoing conversations
about race and social justice, a bold and necessary challenge
to our historical amnesia. Jake Adam York is one of our most
indispensable American poets, and the presence of his work
in the world -- his vision, his enduring spirit -- is for
me, and I think for us all, a guiding light."
I have added three of York's works
to the PhonoLiterature
section of Phonographia because of their connections with records
and phonographs.
However, all of the poems found
in the posthumous collection "Abide" and his 'Project"
should be read and connections with the phonograph are trivial
compared to the subject matter and vision of York's poetry.
But it does make me smile when
I remember that my discovery of Jake Adam York was because of
phonographia and because I judged a book by its cover.
pour des dents
d'un blanc éclatant et saines - Cover illustration
courtesy of Jeroen Diepenmaat ©2005
"Phono Bird" Courtesy
of EMEK, 2009, Silk screen, 21" x 31"
Coachella
"Flower"
Concert
poster for Coachella, Empire Polo Field, April 27-29, 2007 Courtesy
of EMEK.net
Artist:
Elena Maria Ospina Mejia
Elena Maria Ospina
Mejia is a painter, illustrator and cartoonist from Columbia.
Image courtesy of the European Cartoon gallery website.
Print by Pam Wishbow
- Fox's tail is the stylus for the record
Quotes and poetry excerpts courtesy
of Crab Orchard Review and Southern Illinois University Press
and the estate of Jake Adam York ©2014
Phonographia
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