“A fractured ‘I’”: Seven Questions for Kaveh Bassiri
This year, I’ll finally turn an age I can’t say in Hindi.
And even if I get around to finally inputting “fifteen” into Google Translate, I still won’t know how to say it: the syllables will rust and bend around my tongue like cheap metal, and I’ll roll my “r’s” in a way learned in a third grade Spanish class, not in a Delhi sixth-floor apartment. I’ve lost control of the language that raised me: even my prayers sound like they’re running, trying to escape—searching for a mouth which will truly make them holy. So I discovered the poetry of Kaveh Bassiri, his literature spoke to something personal: penning the thoughts of the soft, animal heart which can’t help but feel, but reach for scattered vowels and crooked consonants.
Born in Tehran, Bassiri emigrated to the USA as a teenager, earning an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Arkansas. He has published two chapbooks of poetry: 99 Names of Exile (2019), and Elementary English (2020), which have won the Anzaldúa Poetry Prize and the Rick Campbell Chapbook Prize respectively. Additionally, his poems have been featured in Best American Poetry (2020), Best New Poets 2020, and A Poetry Pedagogy for Teachers (2022). He also acts as a translator, receiving a 2019 fellowship from National Endowment of Arts, and worked on English subtitles for directors such as Abbas Kairostami. Similarly, Bassiri has taught a wide variety of courses on Muslim and Persian literature, and is a public fellow at the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities.
With works often drawing upon ideas of language and identity, Bassiri masterfully wrestles with intimate issues with a grounded tone, creating pieces which feel simple yet profound, familiar and divine.
In particular, Bassiri’s poem “Invention of I” , a call-and-response between English and Farsi, is a meditation upon division, playing with grammar to draw parallels and distances between Americans and Persian language and culture. Bassiri understands that what we speak tells us who we are, and the moment I found this poem, I knew I had to interview him, both to understand his work, and to understand myself.
Your name, Kaveh, is an Iranian legendary hero; has this provided inspiration for your writings in any way? Do you feel any connection to the figure?
I admire and celebrate someone like Kaveh who stands against injustice and fights back. But I don’t see myself as a hero. I also think there are many kinds of heroes. They don’t all have to be warriors. Probably every name has had its own heroes, even if none of them wrote their stories, and they didn’t want to be heroes. According to the Dehkhoda dictionary, “Kaveh” also meant “musk.” I like that. Something aromatic and earthy from the guts of a wild creature. That’s inspiring.
In “Invention of I”, I noticed in the first stanza, you use the word “Farsi”, but then later replace it with “Persian.” Why is this? Similarly, you replace the ordering of the languages across sections: English comes as a response in the first stanza, while it starts in the second. Could you explain what went into that choice?
The changes you mentioned reflect my relationship to the language and culture. The poem begins with “In Farsi,” because it evokes the time I grew up in Iran and was learning English. The Iranian language is called “Farsi” in Iran. English comes second in the first part because it was my second language. The second part considers my life in America, where English is my main language and the Iranian language has become “Persian.”
Many of my friends insist that we should use the name “Persian” for the Iranian language in English, just as we use “German,” not “Deutsch.” The debate over whether we should call my native tongue Persian or Farsi has been going on for a while, but I’m not making any specific point about that topic in the poem. My use draws on a more personal experience of the role that these languages played in shaping who I am: a fractured “I.”
Personally, I interpreted “Invention of I” as a commentary upon Persian and Western cultures. In particular, the lines which stuck out to me the most were the final two. What was your intention behind those lines, and what do you think it has to say about the poem’s larger message?
When you’re an immigrant like me, you can’t avoid writing about Iran and the United States. I came to America as a teenager, not fully formed as an Iranian, and remained a child of both countries. All these years, they have been arguing like divorced parents. I also spent some time going to Iran to do research and write about Iranian literature, film, and theater. So, it’s not surprising that my work navigates both cultures that have shaped my identity and experience. Even when I was young, living in California and trying not to write about Iran, I was pushed to talk about it. Whether I’m in Tehran or Tulsa or with Iranians or non-Iranians, I often end up having to say or explain something about Iran or the US. The paradox is that you have to take different stands and speak about different things depending on the place and people. You are never answering or asking the same questions, and there are many questions you want to ask that never come up.
You mention multiple renowned Persian poets across your work, such as Rumi and Hafez. Do you think their style and subject have had a profound impact upon your work, or would you say Western sources are more influential?
For many Iranians, these canonical poets are part of our DNA. How many countries do we know whose passport pages carry images that allude to poets (Ferdowsi, Hafez, Khayyam, and Attar)? But when I started writing poems in English, I wanted to be like the American poets I loved. I didn’t think of Persian poets. Only when a friend told me that my poems reminded him of Persian poetry did I go back to look. To my surprise, I realized that my passion for metaphor and symbolism may have come from the poems I grew up with in Iran. I also continue to discover amazing poets in translation. So, I can’t say I’m influenced by one source. I’m inspired by poems I read in Persian and English as much as what I read in translation.
If you could characterize the current American poetry scene briefly, how would you do so? Do you think that the modern state of poetry is better than previous situations in the past, or has poetry’s “golden age” already passed?
A complete answer will require much more, but I’ll do my best to address your question here. I once wondered why poetry doesn’t have a more prominent place in the US, as it does in Iran, or why no contemporary poet is widely known by most Americans. When I asked my friends who don’t read poetry, they often mentioned Allen Ginsberg and Robert Frost. It’s true that poetry has a limited audience and that it competes with many other artistic and literary forms for attention. Many poets now write fiction or creative non-fiction, and those books sell and get more attention.
Still, I believe we have a vibrant poetry scene today. We have many extraordinary poets, and the diversity of their voices and the kinds of poems being written and published is unprecedented. There are countless literary journals. Poetry slam competitions all over. Many local open mics and poetry readings to attend. Many places to study poetry, and many poets who make a living teaching poetry. AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) draws thousands of poets every year. A great poet like Claudia Rankine is a best-selling author; another, Arthur Sze, is our poet laureate. Louise Glück won the Nobel Prize. Amanda Gorman was featured on the cover of Time magazine.
I would rather celebrate what we have than worry about the decline of American poetry. We face many more serious concerns. And perhaps the lack of commercial pressure and popularity frees poetry.
If only one of your poems could be remembered in the future, which one would you pick and why?
This is a hard question to answer. I know it sounds like a cop-out to say I don’t think of any of my poems in that way. There was a time when I worried about writing something that would last, something that could stand next to the ageless poems I love. But this idea only stopped me from writing and sharing my work. When I gave up on it, I started to enjoy writing again.
For me, writing is a way of processing and understanding the world. Of course, I also want to share, and some poems feel closer to me than others, but even that changes over time. Poems are meant to be in conversation with their readers, and the reader decides. I have to let go and allow the poems to stand on their own. Still, I’m always grateful whenever someone chooses to read and engage with my writing, and I’m thankful to you for opening this conversation.
I think one of the biggest trends across your work are motifs of language and God, and I’m interested to hear your interpretation on both. Do you think they are fundamentally intertwined concepts? Or something completely different?
You are right to notice God and language as recurring motifs. It’s not surprising for a poet to be obsessed with language, but being an immigrant for whom English is a second language adds another dimension. I wrote about my experience in a poem titled “Writing Persian.”
I see myself inside and outside of English. I look for where words come from, how they migrate, how they transform, how they take root and settle, and how they are forgotten. After college, I decided to learn a new language and moved to Germany, so I could see the world again with new words. Languages and their literature make us question our assumptions. They let us see things we never imagined. Learning a new language turns you into a child again, vulnerable, rediscovering your home again, giving it new meaning. I also became a translator and got a PhD in comparative literature with a focus on translation as another way of living and moving between languages.
As for God, I was honestly surprised by how often the word appeared in my poems. I don’t consider myself religious in the typical sense. But religion has always been a part of my life, whether growing up in Iran as a Muslim, or going to a Catholic high school and college in California, or studying Zen Buddhism. The questions of faith were the first serious questions that kept me awake at night. I was enthralled by writers like Kierkegaard and mystics. I remember late nights sitting with a high school classmate on a bench outside the dorm’s shower stalls, quietly debating God and religion. I’m terrified by how radical religious conviction can lead to unimaginable wonder and monstrous disaster. I suppose I never stopped asking the same questions, and they continue to haunt me and my poems.