Greg Santos' ​Ghost Face

Reviewed by Carla Scarano D'Antonio

(DC Books, 2020)

Fluidity of identities emerges in a game of hide-and-seek in Greg Santos’s fourth collection, where memories are scattered fragments the poet attempts to reassemble. His verses convey a sense of displacement that might be not only a personal story but also a state of mind, a reality common to most of us. Being human does not have only one side but is multiple and variegated, which is unsettling but also enriching.
 
Greg Santos has Cambodian, Portuguese and Spanish origins. Born in Canada to a family of refugees fleeing the Khmer Rouge regime, he was adopted by European immigrants. This gives him a wide spectrum of possibilities from which to observe, different angles that allow a multiple vision that is sometimes confusing but also revealing. Life is a mess and identity remains uncertain, whatever we might think.
 
The poems set a connection between “I” and “You” from the first section in a conversation the poet is having with himself and with the reader. The lyric voice is engaged in a journey of self-discovery that is complex and painful at times, but it also clarifies the poet’s past and is projected in a hopeful future:

Are you Cambodian?
 
So, were you born in Cambodia then?
 
Have you ever been to Cambodia?
 
Then how can you consider yourself Cambodian?
 
[…]
 
Most folks think you’re Filipino.
 
[…]
 
It’s the last name. Santos throws them off.
 
SANTOS. It’s Portuguese, right?
 
Honestly, this is confusing…
 
It’s like you are actually Cambodian or something…

('Cambodian')

His biological mother fled from the Khmer Rouge regime ‘taking nothing but me,/gently growing inside her.’ The harshness of the regime is depicted in stark lines and remembered in ‘Elegy for September 19th’, a ‘Memorial Day dedicated to all the missing, dead and the ancestors of the Cambodian people affected by genocide perpetuated by the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975-1979.’ It is a big wound in Cambodian history and a hard start to the poet’s progression towards healing. ‘Why was I adopted?’ is therefore the defining question that emerges, which is linked to another question: ‘What is/your original face?’ He is in search of faces that look like his own, that do not question origins and identity, but this does not allow the opportunity to have a multi-layered and diverse individuality.
 
In this journey of self-discovery, absence is the key word:

We exist
in a world
of slashes.
 
Bound
not by blood,
but by absence.
 
Our fathers
are
ghosts.
 
(‘Absence’)

It is ‘the presence of absence,’ as in the Portuguese word saudade, that is relevant: ‘a longing for someone or something that you remember fondly but know you can never experience again’ (Laurie Burrows Grad). In Santos’s case, the absence is that of his father, who suddenly died of cancer when the poet was a teenager. He remembers him in fragmented memories. His father reappears in the last poem in a compelling and emotional dialogue with the poet, dated April 19, 2019:

The children
are asleep, you
watch me from
photo frames.
 
It is raining on Good Friday.
An April shower,
intermittent taps and
drips on the office window.
 
It is nice to feel
the warmth of your smile
again, even if they’re just
pictures.
 
(‘Dear Dad’)

​Santos remembers his father’s love through his characteristics, such as his ‘infamous sweet tooth’ that his grandchildren inherited, and some of the things he did, such as recording songs on a cassette tape while rehearsing with the Santos Band in 1990. These memories are also connected with bigger events that involve a global view, such as recent images of a black hole and the fire that damaged Notre-Dame de Paris. The reflections on ordinary life that are connected to a wider perspective that embraces what happens in the world (and even in the universe) constitute a clever, recurrent characteristic of Santos’s poetry. In ‘Shall We Dance?’, the exploration of Mars interweaves with his children’s swimming lessons and his having a haircut:

“You are the best daddy ever.”
I feel so lucky.
To be the best daddy ever.
To be alive right now.
I admit I do not always feel this grateful.
Small irritants, micro-aggressions
have a tendency to ruin the day.
The gravity of our world
always pushing down on our fragile bodies.
We are not always thankful.
But today I am.

​('Shall We Dance?')

It is a good moment in which the poet is present and, at the same time, connected with the universe in a positive, comprehensive way, while also being capable of embracing his multi-layered essence and a diverse reality. It is a ‘grateful space dance’ that seems to overcome his confusion, possible forgetfulness, fog-mindedness and fragmented memories that appear as a list in the poems of the first section. Identity remains multiple and questionable, in flux, but belonging comes to the fore. Santos feels grateful for what he has achieved, that is, his family, his wife and two children, and the healing memories of his father that the poet revisits. They are gifts that eventually shape his ghosts. This is an enthralling collection that traces the poet’s growth towards being able to participate in a personal but universal exploration of his origins and essence, and widens out to reveal multiple challenging visions of being human.

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Carla Scarano D’Antonio lives in Surrey with her family. She obtained her Degree of Master of Arts in Creative Writing with Merit at Lancaster University in October 2012. Her pamphlet Negotiating Caponata was recently published by Dempsey & Windle (2020); she has also self-published a poetry pamphlet, A Winding Road (2011). She has published her work in various anthologies and magazines, and is currently working on a PhD on Margaret Atwood’s work at the University of Reading. In 2016, she and Keith Lander won first prize in the Dryden Translation Competition with translations of Eugenio Montale’s poems. She writes in English as a second language.
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Visit her websites:
http://carlascarano.blogspot.com/
http://www.carlascaranod.co.uk/