Piece Comment

Review of An Unlikely Partnership


This piece grabbed me as soon as I heard the opening lines from prisoner/poet Spoon Jackson. Jackson is the much more inherently intriguing half of the 'unlikely partnership,' which makes for an interesting challenge for this story's producer, KVMR's Mike Thornton, because the person he interviews is the other half of the collaboration, a Swedish composer named Steffan Safsten.

Thornton has put this story together with a lot of skill --- it has a nice flow, a thoughtful array of Jackson's poetry, and well-selected pieces of interview tape from composer Safsten --- but as I listen, I find myself wishing over and over that Jackson was interviewed as well. What's Jackson's back-story? What did he think when a Swedish composer wrote him out of the blue asking to put his poetry to music? How does he think the composition turned out?

I find myself especially wanting to hear from Jackson when composer Safsten suggests that a prisoner is likely to have a 'freer mind' than the rest of us. What does a man who's been imprisoned for 28 years think about a statement like that?