In the Mercy of Time-Flute Music: An Interview with Meena Alexander

Abstract

f *--^ eena Alexander and Daniela Gioseffi first met (^ S£/j when they were featured poets at the 2002 Peot^/A^ pies' Poetry Gathering, sponsored by Poets House and City Lore at Cooper Union in New York. That was the year Alexander published a collection of poetry entitled Illiterate Heart, which won the PEN Open Book Award. Her latest collection of poetry, Raw Silk, was recently published by TriQuarterly Books, and her memoir, Fault Lines one of Publishers Weekly's best books of 1993 has been reissued in a new edition from the Feminist Press (2003). Her volume Indian Love Poems, edited for the Everyman series, was published by Knopf in 2005. Alexander is a poet of Syrian-Christian descent, born in Allahabad, India, and raised in southern India and North Africa. After marrying, she came to live in the United States in 1979. She is the mother of a college-age son and daughter and continues to be a global traveler. In 2004 she was featured at the International Struga Poetry Festival in the Republic of Macedonia and then visited southern India to return to her childhood home, where her aging mother still lives. She is Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College and the Graduate Center at City University of New York. Daniela Gioseffi is the American Book Award-winning author of thirteen books of poetry and prose. Her latest include Women on War: International Writings (2003) and Symbiosis (2002). She has received two grant awards in poetry and performance poetry from the New York State Council for the Arts and an award for short fiction from PEN American Center. Her verse was etched in marble on Penn Station's Seventh Avenue concourse wall next to Walt