Pardon My Heart: Poems

Winner of the 2019 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry 

Pardon My Heart is an exploration of love in the contemporary African American ethos. In this lyrically complex collection, the speakers and subjects—the adult descendants of the Great Migration—reckon with past experiences and revelatory, hard-earned ideas about race and class.

With a compelling blend of narrative, musicality, and imagery, Jackson’s poems span a multitude of scenes, landscapes, and sensations. Pardon My Heart examines intimacy, memory, grief, and festivity while seeking out new, reflective sectors within emotion and culture. By means of concise portraiture and sonic vibrancy, Jackson’s poems ultimately express the urgency and pliability of the human soul. 

 

• Deaf Republic: Poems
• Sustainability: A Love Story (21st Century Essays)
• The Tradition
• Serious Daring: Creative Writing in Four Genres
• The Selected Levis: Revised Edition (Pitt Poetry Series)
• A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
• American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin Poets)
• When My Brother Was an Aztec
• Wade in the Water: Poems
• alphabet (New Directions)