Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Indian Veranda h Sister, you live in a very private place      Meena Alexander, “Red Parapet” I will visit you in New Delhi in March, when school is out. I will see your strange house, verandah closing it around, more like an old Malay palace in Singapore than any rented apartment in New York. I will ask Raymond when he’s home about managing a country’s oil market, but say little about life with Guy. I will run with Liesel and read to Hannah the books that she is fast out-growing. I will be driven by your driver through the old city, which will remind me of the four long days I was stuck in Calcutta when my plane had engine trouble. I will think that an itinerary is always also an interruption. In the relative coolness of morning, I will sit with you on the verandah, sipping tea poured by your housekeeper, both of us brightly polite to her, neither of us used to being served in our house, if not by our young mother, the tea...

Another reading weekend, but this one combined with a vacation. The Circle for Asian American Literary Studies organized the reading at the conference of the American Literature Association, a coalition of author societies. Chaired by Nicky Schildkraut (University of Southern California), Meena Alexander and I read for a small but attentive audience. It was a pleasure to meet Meena and hear her read. She has an alluring voice, riverine. Born in Allahabad, India, she traveled extensively as a child and an adult, and has finally settled down in New York City, and become an American citizen. I hear in her poetry the unceasing question of what to adopt and what to let go. This metamorphic self-making was nicely captured by two different papers on her poetry, presented in the panel before our reading. Stephanie Han (City University of Hong Kong) wanted to define her as American. The other paper, by Trevor Lee (City University of New York--The Graduate Center) whose thesis advisor is A...