Blue Lotus - Meena Alexander

  Blue Lotus

[alert-success] Blue Lotus - Meena Alexander

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         Meena Alexander, a diasporic writer, who has a trans- continental background, as she has born Kerala, India, and has raised in Sudan. So her work Blue Lotus  basically deals with the trans- continental feelings, and the feeling of having territory in more than one continent. In this poem she recollects her past in her grandmother’s  house, there stays a blue lotus, which symbolises the childhood days of the speaker. But now she is in a different country, has lost her identity, and is in a deserted state.

            Twilight, I stroll through stubble fields

            Clouds lift, the hope of a mountain.

            What was distinct turns to mist

        Now the speaker is in a lost state as the twilight time signifies dull lighted time, on which everything is not in the visible range. Then she moves through the barren field, which indicates the lack of any creativity in the speaker’s mind as she has left the native country a long time ago and everything looks like a cloud which can hide the hope of mountain, the creativity in authors mind. And the speaker only has a fistful of memories, that burns her heart, the memory of her ancestors. The speaker feels her hand split at the wrist because of her trans-continental feelings, as she does not know whether her tribute to her ancestors are a good one or a punishment. Then she describes the blue lotus in her grandmother’s house.

            And one is a ghost though I cannot tell which

           For the sharpness between them scents

            Even the orchids, a sharing of thing

        The second part of this poem describes the speaker’s deserted state in the foreign country, and also the patriarchal domination that she has been facing. She is to pick the country, which shows her identity, so her contemplation makes the identity crisis of the speaker. Then she describes the struggles of women in the male dominated society, as she compares a woman with a mountain, that comes out of water, ice, and sand. After all these struggles the woman comes out and places her feast of creativity in the plantation leaf.

        I have climbed the mountain and cleared

        Away the sand and ice using first my bare hands

        Then a small knife.

        The third stanza describes, on which manner that the speaker has got her creativity to the world. She uses the knife, which implies the pen, and through this manner the speaker climbs up the mountain of male domination. For her, her hand and the pen is a weapon against any struggles. Then the migration of the speaker desolate her mother, who is singing in the rock houses, tombs. Now she compares herself to a child, who is trying to hold the cloud, not a possible one, this action implies the speaker’s action of getting the creativity that she has lost because of her diasporic feelings.

           In the final part, she laments for her language that has lost since her departure from her native country. Now in a new country she is learning the language again for a new tribe. She again sees the cloud which indicates the memory of her childhood. She takes her comfort in writing as no one will not mind her. Then she again talks about the household ghost, male domination, and she is in search of bald rock on the river bank on an island which implies the speaker’s search for identity in her immigrated place. The speaker ends this with a plea to some great writers to help her in writing and she seems her ancestors through the stone with tongue.