Meena Alexander
Meena Alexander (Born 17 February 1951 in Allahabad, India; died 21 November 2018, New York City) was a poet, scholar, and writer.
Quotes
[edit]Fault Lines: a Memoir (1993 and 2003)
[edit]quotes from expanded 2nd edition, unless otherwise noted
- When I was a child I saw the sea burn.
How often I have thought that sentence but with no page to set it on, no place to make it mine. As I sit and write, my words fly off the page. I think of geese lumbering into the wind. Or paper kites men have held in their hands, stretched taut over wind, over water, lit by the half darkness. But the darkness turns into barbed wire. In reaching for the past I am forced to crawl through it.
- It seems to me that in its rhythms the poem, the artwork, can incorporate scansion of the actual, the broken steps, the pauses, the blunt silences, the brutal explosions. So that what is pieced together is a work that exists as an object in the world but also, in its fearful consonance, its shimmering stretch, allows the world entry.
I think of it as a recasting that permits our lives to be given back to us, fragile, precarious.
The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience (1996)
[edit]- Migrancy, a central theme for many of us in this shifting world, forces a recasting of how the body is grasped, how language works. Then, too, at the heart of what happens in these sometimes jagged reflections of mine, is the question of postcolonial memory. ("Overture: Another Voice")
- How can I make a durable past in art, a past that is not merely nostalgic, but stands in vibrant relation to the present? This is the question that haunts me. (beginning of "A Durable Past")
- Through speech, the entanglement of thoughts and feelings might be unwound, the truth permitted to shine, however fitfully. (beginning of "Erupting Words")
- The act of writing, it seems to me, makes up a shelter, allows space to what would otherwise be hidden, crossed out, mutilated. Sometimes writing can work toward a reparation, making a sheltering space for the mind. Yet it feeds off ruptures, tears in what might otherwise seem a seamless, oppressive fabric. more?? (from "Piecemeal Shelters")
Quotes about
[edit]- As the condition of migration and cultural displacement comes to be seen as a metaphor of our times, Meena Alexander's poignant and perceptive book is a welcome addition. Here, the postcolonial condition is addressed in its variety and its particularity: as fiction, criticism, personal reflection. This is a compelling, subtly crafted performance.
- Homi K. Bhabha, used as blurb for The Shock of Arrival
- At once violent, erotic, and somber, Manhattan Music is infused with the power of myth and poetry and the inner life, the electric intersection of characters who illuminate for the reader both the Old World and the New.
- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, used as blurb for Manhattan Music (1996)
- Meena Alexander sings of countries, foreign and familiar places where the heart and spirit live, and places for which one needs a passport and visas. Her voice guides us far away and back home. The reader sees her visions and remembers and is uplifted.
- Maxine Hong Kingston, used as blurb for Raw Silk (2004)
- Meena Alexander has written a fierce new complexity into questions of identity, diaspora, tradition, language, and community. This is a powerful fusion of poetic vision and critical thinking.
- Adrienne Rich, used as blurb for The Shock of Arrival (1996)
- Meena Alexander's acute poetic sensibility makes this memoir a joy to read. At the same time, the writing is grounded enough to evoke the earthier loam of violence and reality.
- Bapsi Sidhwa, used as blurb for Fault lines (1993)
- In concrete imagery and intellectual passion, Alexander is full of surprises. These are haunting texts of hybrid America.
- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, used as blurb for The Shock of Arrival
