Saba Keramati writes about the hopes, dreams, characteristics, and experiences that form the self but that also stir up more mysteries in her new poetry collection, Self-Mythology.
Keramati, born in America, writes from the perspective of being an only child of political refugees, her Chinese mother and Iranian father. Her poems probe how holding many identities results in feeling not fully one of them. The first poem, “THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO SAY THIS,” conveys the pang of these distinctions: “I have to write this poem in English / I do not speak my mother’s language / I do not speak my father’s language / I am not grateful for this country.” These circumstances and the desire to claim an identity, while at the same time chafing against the divisions of self, set the foundation for the collection that asks, “Who am I being today? / … / You’ll always be wrong, and I’ll always be / here, chameleoning myself / with every shift of the light.”
Self-Mythology is forthright about its focus on the poet, but the poems also look outward. A series of centos, poems with all their lines borrowed from others, are sprinkled throughout the book, and each is called “Cento for Loneliness & Writer’s Block & the Fear of Never Being Enough, Despite Being Surrounded by Asian American Poets.” The third such poem contains lines like “I hold things I cannot say in my mouth—” and “There is mythology planted in my mouth which is like sin. / I cannot help but know the words.” In addition to these recurring centos, poems also reflect on attempts to learn a language, miscarriage, what it is like to be in a relationship, fire season in California, social media, astrology, and 9/11.
Moments of revelation emerge in Self-Mythology. In “Chimera,” the speaker listens to the radio and hears lyrics conveying a thought that had earlier seemed original to the poet:
But here it is, clear over the airwaves: my own thoughts in someone else’s mouth. So what’s left? I admit I am interested in my own thinking, obsessed with discovery and answers because: how devastating to be wrong about who you are. Did god give us all the same questions?
We may be more connected than we know.
Read the full interview at Pulp.