“Raw Silk,” is a deeply moving collection from a poet who crosses borders New York City poet Meena Alexander was born in Allahabad , India and divided her childhood between India and the Sudan . From her cross-cultural perspective Alexander writes with moving intensity of post-September 11 events as she evokes violence and civil strife, love, despair, and a hard-won hope. This autobiographical cycle of poems reflects the surrealism of such a life, and is shot through with the frissons of pleasure and pain, of beauty and tension, that mark a truly global identity.
Praise for Alexander’s Illiterate Heart: “With her bold syntax and polycultural texts, Alexander reckons with the past through language and lyric, pushing the poem down the river to its abiding source “where syntax smolders.” — Women’s Review of Books
