The Tribute Horse

In the collision of different sounds and cultures — which Som has no doubt experienced his whole life — he recognizes that there is no pure moment to return to, no essential identity to define, and that such ideals are sentimental illusions.

Som renders all of these voices not as self-contained fragments, but as contingent, interdependent clues to the mystery of identity and language. The “debt of sound” Som owes is not only the sound of English, but of translation and misprision, misstatement and error. The individual voices here combine into a chorus of irresolvable music; Som portrays them as patterns amid cacophony. Identity, after all, is who we say we are. And what we say depends upon who’s listening.

The Tribute Horse, Brandon Som’s debut full collection, is a surprising title once you wade into the first few pages of this beautiful mediation on migration, cultural memory, and the great mitigating force of both, language. The title image is almost like a piece of statuary, a trophy or memorial object, and to be sure, this collection does feel like a tribute, but it spends far more time at sea and among the heights of birdsong and other utterances than would seem to warrant that powerfully terrestrial and corporeal image of the horse.