Meena Alexander: A Poet of War, Violence, Womanhood and Wistfulness

Meena Alexander was a Diaspora writer of India. This paper deals with her last collection of poems titled ‘Atmospheric Embroidery’. Themes of war, violence, womanhood and wistfulness echo throughout this complex and sensuous book of poetry. She spent her life on four continents, i.e., Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. This developed a strong sense of dislocation in her poems.  She wrote about the war-torn area of Darfur in Sudan, her childhood places in India and her recollection of the past in New York, USA. She dexterously created images that go deep into multiple layers. It is not easy to comprehend her many poems as they delve into multiple meanings. She has very dextrously delineated the innocence of a child who was being detached from his/her motherland, who doesn’t know how to deal with changed situations and impending threats. She delineated situations of conflict zones and living conditions there. She has also explained the emotions of a grown-up person who found on revisiting his childhood places completely changed. Womanhood has found a good place in her poems, in which the use of Sita’s image is brilliantly done. The paper tries to analyse her few poems and delineate the major idea behind them, and explore Meena Alexander as one of the finest modern poets of English, hailed from India.