Raw Silk by Meena Alexander

After meeting the poet Meena Alexander at this year’s PEN World Voices Festival, I read her memoir Fault Lines, which includes her memories of a childhood divided between India and Sudan. I followed that up with Raw Silk, a collection of poems largely written in the aftermath of 9/11. Alexander combines glancing references to the attack in New York with allusions to outbreaks of ethnic violence in India. The joining of gorgeous, tactile language with scenes of violence—as well as the South Asian settings—reminds me of Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost, about a forensic scientist in Sri Lanka.

Here’s the first section of “Blue Lotus” from Raw Silk. The Pamba River runs through the state of Kerala in India. The image of a severed hand recurs in Alexander’s work.

Twilight, I stroll through stubble fields
clouds lift, the hope of a mountain.
What was distinct turns to mist,

what was fitful burns the heart.
When I dream of the tribe gathering
by the red soil of the Pamba River

I feel my writing hand split at the wrist.
Dark tribute or punishment, who can tell?
You kiss the stump and where the wrist

bone was, you set the stalk of a lotus.
There is a blue lotus in my grandmother’s garden,
its petals whirl in moonlight like this mountain.