Meena Alexander Analysis

Meena Alexander believes in poetry as political activism: her poetry often deals with conflicts and unrest, cities at the edge of war, episodes of discrimination, and so on. In an interview with Ruth Maxey, the poet admits that history conspires against the writing of poetry (Alexander 2009, 190). Many American poets have tried to do away with history, and to break the chains that still linked them to tradition, and to the old canon of British poetry. Alexander mentions Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose notion of self-reliance, which she interprets as reinvention of the self, “exhilarated” her (2009, 3).
Chapter first of this study is entitled Identity which offers the theoretical framework of the term identity and the elements of identity in her works and try to find out her own identity. Chapter second is entitled “dislocation; sense of belonging,

The chapter also deals with the various types of violence including colonial violence, partition violence, state violence, religious violence, terrorism, aftermath of 9/11 and wars. The poet covers the racial and ethnic violence, Afghan war, massacre of Tiananmen Square, the Emergency rule, political struggle in Cambodia to exhibit her strong political interest. Third chapter entitled Language: Style, Diction and Devices bring out the creative style and language used by Meena Alexander. The texts open into new meaning out of a close reading of her memoir Fault Lines and two novels and few poems. The chapter interprets the prescribed works to specify the meaning of its language by analysis, paraphrase, and commentary on the obscure, ambiguous, and figurative stanzas. The chapter provides comprehensive interpretation of imagery and symbolism as it is useful in understanding poet’s feelings, thoughts, and working of mind. Alexander’s poetry is overloaded with the imagery of various kinds. The recurring images are