With her strong voice and precise language, Meena Alexander has crafted this visceral, worldly collection of poems. The experience she brings to the reader is sensual in many senses of the word, as she invokes bright colors, sounds, smells, and feelings. Her use of vivid imagery from the natural world-- birds, lilies, horses-- up against that from the world of humans-- oppression, slavery, and violence-- ties her work to the earth even as she works a few mystical poetic transformations. In Alexander's world, the songs of a bird can become the voice of a girl in a café and the red juice of mulberries can be as shocking as blood. When she focuses her attention on the cloth of a girl's sari, the material of a woman's life, or the blood in her veins, she speaks to the particular experience of women in the world. The women are vividly present-- sometimes they are hidden or veiled, juxtaposed with open gardens in full bloom. It is difficult not to come away from Quickly Changing River without a new sense of the power and frailty of being alive.
1/9/2008
Triquarterly
6 1/8 x 8 1/2, 136 pp.
Cloth Text
ISBN 0-8101-2450-5 / $44.95
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Quickly Changing River
Poems
Meena Alexander
With her strong voice and precise language, Meena Alexander has crafted this visceral, worldly collection of poems. The experience she brings to the reader is sensual in many senses of the word, as she invokes bright colors, sounds, smells, and feelings. Her use of vivid imagery from the natural world--birds, lilies, horses--up against that from the world of humans--oppression, slavery, and violence--ties her work to the earth, even as she works a few mystical poetic transformations.
In Alexander's world, the songs of a bird can become the voice of a girl in a cafe and the red juice of mulberries can be as shocking as blood. When she focuses her attention on the cloth of a girl's sari, the material of a woman's life, or the blood in her veins, she speaks to the particular experience of women in the world. The women are vividly present; sometimes they are hidden or veiled, juxtaposed with open gardens in full bloom. It is difficult not to come away from Quickly Changing River without a new sense of the power and frailty of being alive.
"These are poems of rich and satisfying detail-- gingko trees and water taxis, the pearly feathers of pigeons. But the real strength of this book goes far beyond detail, however lyrically rendered. These poems are a sustained elegy for homelessness, for the displacement at the heart of human life. Meena Alexander is an eloquent and ambitious poet." -- Eavan Boland
"Quickly Changing River is an alluvial force of surprises reaching near and far, always beckoning us closer and closer to its urgent and magical source. From the collection's first poem to its last, 'Cosmopolitan' to 'August 14, 2004,' there's a movement here that challenges and enchants. Meena Alexander is a truth-teller who knows how to make language do anything and everything she desires." --Yusef Komunyakaa
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