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D.D. Jackson: I Call

By John Chacona
October 15, 2024
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"I Call" is a poem about the immigrant's dilemma of identifying with two places but fully inhabiting neither, using the refrain, "a place that doesn't exist" to name this condition. Yet Quebec-born Toronto poet Choucri Paul Zemokhol's family came to Canada from the Middle East, a place that, even in the interval since the poem's publication in 2009, doesn't exist, metaphorically or in fact. On Poetry Project (Self Produced, 2024) D.D. Jackson's setting begins in a swirl of piano before Raina Sokolov-Gonzalez enters with pure-toned vocals. As this drama moves from the intimately personal to the global doomscroll of alienation, dislocation, migration and war, Jackson tightens the screws then explodes into a piano solo of tragic grandeur. If you want to compare this staggering performance to the songs of the Armenian composer Komitas or to Shostakovich's settings of Tsvetayeva, you'll get no argument from this corner.

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John Chacona is a freelance journalist, content writer and producer in Cleveland.

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