A contemplative memoir in verse, MUMBLES OF A SOUL (Poems, Prose, and Thoughts) is the debut collection of poetry from Toyin Sebastien Ajimati, Canadian-born and the son of a Haitian mother and Nigerian father. Over 73 short poems, Ajimati invites readers into the inner life of a young Black man (Ajimati originally wrote these poems while growing up in Ottawa) from an immigrant family, reflecting on such topics as racism, identity, alienation, and self-knowledge. Ajimati shares his deepest frustrations and fears, acknowledging the injustices and irresolvable predicaments of the modern world, but remains steadfastly optimistic. “Catching yourself in self-reflective misery is never pleasant,” Ajimati writes in his preface. “It is astonishing how it can sabotage and mentally make me feel less than what I am.”
MUMBLES OF A SOUL is most effective when Ajimati connects his broader observations about the world to his lived experiences. In “Screen Vexed,” the poet addresses a Black man he sees on the evening news who has been accused of a crime. “You will never know me, and I will never know you,” Ajimati writes. “Still, we are forcefully connected because to simply put it / You are a Black man, and I am too.” Defining and maintaining one’s identity in conversation with the broader culture is a prominent concern in these poems, whether in a general context of maturating and evolving as a person, as in “Levels of Self-Consciousness” (“Growing and going through changes / These changes, at times, make me feel as if I am a stranger to myself”) or, in poems like “Being True to Who?” and “Lost Rams,” which find Ajimati struggling with maintaining individual authenticity against the temptations of celebrity culture (“what image will I borrow?”) Ajimati’s frustrations with a status-obsessed world are vividly expressed in “Trap and Feels,” in which the poet compares the pursuit of success to a race (“There is a race at every corner / If it’s not for status / then for ass”) and compares the desperate need to win to performance-enhancing drugs (“A lot of them are on ‘status-steroids’ and other narcissistic drugs.”)
Many of Ajimati’s meditations in this volume feel too oblique and generalized to resonate emotionally, as in observational poems like “Stages of Mortality” (“we are born to die”) and “Recognize the Within” (“Beware of many who constantly seek to stroke your ego / as it may be them being calculating and deceitful”), which express familiar sentiments without digging deeper for more profound truths, as the poet does in “Rain and Radiance” when he speaks of emotions as “sources of energy from within” that connect us with the greater universe. When Ajimati focuses less on the big picture and allows his unique idiosyncrasies to emerge, the results can be startling and engaging, as in “Percolated Passion,” in which he humorously ponders what men think about during sex. (“Does he think of a legacy coming from his seeds? / Or about how lovely her legs can be at position number three?”). Like most poetry written in youth, the verses in MUMBLES OF A SOUL often come across as mawkish and didactic; more ruthless culling would have made this a stronger collection.
At its best, Toyin Sebastien Ajimati’s voice shines with the compassion, sensitivity, and heartfelt questioning of a thoughtful young man asking tough questions of a complex and often maddening universe in his poetry collection, MUMBLES OF A SOUL.
~Edward Sung for IndieReader