“Three Canadian Jazz Artists” – poems by Kathryn MacDonald

March 20th, 2024

Diana Krall (When I Look Into Your Eyes)

She plays slow, haunting
notes that linger and flow
around her voice, unearths
the story that lies between
the words of each song –
tempts, beckons, echoes
the great Billie’s phrases
within the beat in her own
elegant way.

Michael Occhipinti (Creation Dream)

His guitar finds the jazz – think
the Bird, think Miles, think
of the history of metamorphosis
the unwrapping and transforming
of pop into distinctive polyrhythms,
complex chords, improvisation, think
the making of something gritty
and elegant, something deep and new.

Molly Johnson (Because of Billie)

She sings Billie because she says,
“I am because of Billie,” recalls
the debt owed to musicians
of the civil rights era. She sings
a tribute, an acclamation, an imitation,
an emotional homage. I think
of Miss Simone, the price
paid forward, the cost of passion.

___

photo by James Archbold

Kathryn MacDonald has published in Room, FreeFall and other Canadian literary journals and anthologies, as well as internationally in the U.K., U.S. and other countries. She is the author Far Side of the Shadow Moon (chapbook), A Breeze You Whisper: Poems, and Calla & Édourd (fiction). Click here to visit her website.

Listen to “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” from Diana Krall’s 1999 album “When I Look In Your Eyes” [Universal Music Group]