What is death but a hoax we punctuate: a comma
that ascends to crown the head of memory, that takes
both the left and right hand of the father, folding
one into the other.
From “‘Direct Objects”
Song of My Softening, by Omotara James, is a remarkable debut in which the poet, again and again, surrenders to vulnerability and fragility. The book chronicles a trajectory that would, and often does, harden survivors—James, however, moves ever closer to softening, to a heroic and profound self-acceptance that renders this one of the most important commentaries on body politics in recent memory. James is a master of song, as adept at the minimalist line as she is with sweeping lines that span the page, continually surprising with turns of phrase that are equal parts prophetic and musical. This is a tremendous first collection.
James’ ear for sound is evident in nearly every poem, even in the abrupt lines and familiar turns of phrase that proliferate “Found God Poem.” In the poem, James mines dozens of colloquialisms invoking God to create a fast-paced litany that begins in reverence and ends in rebuke. She opens the poem with a nod to the beginning of the shahada as the speaker proclaims, “There is no God but God,” before moving into a back-and-forth that simultaneously praises and critiques the many iterations of God. The speaker laments, “God of that’s what you get/God who don’t like ugly,” while also praying, “All Glory unto God/God in heaven/In which we trust.” The poem culminates in feelings of abandonment as the speaker wonders, “God damn/Which God did I offend/show me.” The musicality propels readers forward with an urgent pace while also capturing the cadence of practiced prayer.
Song of My Softening is concerned most deeply and consistently with the body—how it moves through the world, how others perceive it, the ways in which the world assigns it value. “First Kiss / Under Capitalism” considers the body as commodity, opening with a young woman’s realization that she has “power to build/on this market” after discovering “The currency/placed on the mouth/of a seventeen-year-old girl.” The speaker admits, “I was afraid/of what leaving high school with untouched/lips might indicate about my human capital,” a fear she shares with her brother’s best friend. The scene culminates in the boy delivering a hard kiss in exchange for oral sex, which the speaker imagines “was better than nothing, even if [she] had to haggle for it.”
James also contends with her lineage and what it means to live in diaspora. “Bang and a Whimper” describes how “A Black mother will tell you,/with a straight face and stretched belly, that she didn’t want you to be a statistic./Math makes a poet of us all. Made me homeland and diaspora. Half ship and half sea.” The feeling of unbelonging intensifies in the next poem, “A Mother Can See More Sitting Down than a Child Standing Up,” where the speaker’s mother tells her “that no man will ever love [her]/at this weight.” Despite this rejection, the speaker confides in her mother, explaining that she was raped, only for the mother to “whisper it was a good thing she didn’t raise [her] in Nigeria,” a cryptic response that the speaker is afraid to ask about.
Body image plays a central role in the collection’s trajectory toward self-acceptance. Early poems highlight the many ways that both loved ones and society as a whole continue to shame people for the shape of their bodies. Toward the end of the collection, poems take on a tone of celebration, none more evident than the appropriately titled “Body Image.” The brief poem resists shame, telling the reader, “No matter how they/try to claim you, your body/can never belong to them,” and “However you fall, fail,/submit to frailty, your body/cannot conceal the message. My love,/you are the message.” This poem, like so many others, extends outward to console those readers who, like James, have been made to feel like their bodies are not acceptable.
Song of My Softening builds upon the legacy of Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and its celebration of the body, flawed and messy and beautiful. Omotara James is, without a doubt, one of the most exciting debut voices of the year.