Meena Alexander (1951–2018)

While barely one hundred pages long, Nampally Road shouts a clear message of India. Protagonist and poet, Mira Kannadical returns to Hyderabad, India after four years studying in England. She has come home to teach poetry, but finds her neighborhood in a constant state of civil unrest; a battle field where violence and tear gas clouds are everyday occurrences. Police brutality and political corruption hold the community in paralyzed fear, especially after a woman is gang-raped by police officers and left for dead in a prison cell. Not many are willing to rock the boat after a group of orange sellers are attacked for protesting taxes. Mira is dating an activist who thinks differently. This suspends Mira in conflict as she tries to reconcile her beliefs with the changes of modern India.
Quotes to quote, "It was if the bloodshed in the afternoon already belonged in another country" (p 9) "I suffered from dislocation" (p 29), and "He died a safe death, in another country, under the gentle shade of the tamarind tree" (p 96).… (meer)

Atmospheric Embroidery: Poems by Meena Alexander is a collection of poetry reflecting on life on three continents. The poets earliest memories are of India and childhood. Later they move to Sudan and the violence there. Other poems reflect on her final stop -- New York.

The poems are written in mostly a standard and recognized format. A majority of the poems are written in open couplet form without rhymes. This adds to the meaning and imagery presented. Halting the reader, pausing and then continuing even in midthought. Fourteen lines poems also make an appearance but do not have the rhyme scheme of a sonnet, but at first glance, the reader, like I did, might think it a sonnet.

The subject matter varies with region and with time. The images of death and violence on women are particularly played out in the poems about Sudan. "Nurredin" is an exceptionally well-done example with the violence obscured through a childlike vision. "Moksha" however, leaves little to the imagination with the actions of a Delhi rape gang. Like all our memories, the poet's grows and things are remembered, remembered partially, remembered incorrectly, but add to our consciousness. All of the poems contribute to the four line final poem "Indian Ocean Blues." A well-written collection of culture and cultural observations as well as violence in all cultures.

… (meer)

Having greatly admired Alexander's volume of poetry Raw Silk, I was eager to read her story. This is a memoir in two parts. The first, published in 1993, recounts the poet's childhood in India and Khartoum, her eventual marriage to East Asian historian David Lelyveld, her immigration to America, and her professional life as an English professor. She talks of cultural displacement, not only by nation but by generation: her mother's life was far more constricted than her own. Since she is a poet, Alexander's language is lyrical and evocative, and I learned a lot of the vocabulary of Indian tradition--in food, clothing, ritual and more.

The second part, published in 2003, is basically a series of shocks. She recounts September 11 and its aftermath (she was teaching at the CUNY Graduate Center on 5th Avenue in NYC at the time) and then describes her discovery, late in life, that her adored grandfather sexually abused her as a child. It's hard to fathom the surfacing of this repressed memory, mainly because in the first part, the grandfather is so adored; such a beloved part of her childhood. It's a mystery, upsetting to ponder.

Alexander died in November 2018, aged 67. A good poet, gone from us.… (meer)