How much can sound open or narrow the lens through which experience is filtered? What sound does disappointment make? What color is a scream? How can one sense represent the attributes of another? What sound does red lipstick make? The poems in Prof. Linda Jackson’s book What Yellow Sounds Like explore sound and color and the magic that happens when sound merges or clashes with other senses. A world is created in the poems through images and specific details that seek answers to the most fundamental questions of identity – who am I and to whom do I belong. Through the poems, listeners lean in and hear the sounds various speakers make and the relationship color, particularly yellow, has on their voices and experiences.
Linda Susan Jackson is an associate professor and deputy chair of the English Department at Medgar Evers College/CUNY who was selected as the student choice award winner for the most passionate professor. A New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in poetry and a Cave Canem fellow, her first collection of poetry, What Yellow Sounds Like, was a finalist in the 2006 National Poetry Series Open Competition and was published by Tia Chucha Press this past Spring. She also received a fellowship to Soul Mountain Writers Retreat in Connecticut and this summer will be a teaching fellow at Frost Place. She has published two chapbooks, Vitelline Blues and A History of Beauty, both published by Black-eyed Susan Publishing. Most recently, her poetry has appeared in anthologies and journals, including Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, Crab Orchard Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Gathering Ground, Heliotrope, Rivendell, Warpland and Brilliant Corners, among other journals and has been featured on From the Fishouse audio archive. She has read her poetry in a variety of venues, including The Schomburg Center, The Studio Museum, The Brooklyn Public Library, New York University, Asian American Writers Workshop, The New School, Poets House, Barnes & Noble, at Medgar Evers College and on WBAI radio, 99.5FM. She is married and the mother of one son.
