Blue Lotus

BLUE LOTUS

"It is not enough to cover the rock with leaves"

Wallace Stevens

Twilight, I stroll through stubble fields

clouds lift, the hope of a mountain.
What was distinct turns to mist,

Stubble fields are essentially barren lands, the poet is illustrated as walking through it. The harvested piece of land lacks life and is a
symbol for abandoned memories. Though the memories were abandoned the poet has begun to walk through it again. She is looking at
her ancestral terrains. The atmosphere of twilight lends a mystical aura. The speciality of twilight is that it is seen either before the rising
or the setting of the sun. This means it can lead to both mysteries and realizations. Mountain is a signifier for rock and it represents
repressed memories. The clouds had been covering her memories. Her life was clear until now, but with the lifting of the clouds the mist
and confusion lurking behind it has been exposed.

what was fitful burns the heart.

When I dream of my tribe gathering
by the red soil of the Pamba River

Remanets of wishes and moments of happiness are no longer significant. Because of its association with repressed memories and desires
they have started to remind the poet of catastrophes and resentment. It is burning her heart. She thinks of her ancestors. She imagines
her ancestors meeting on the red soil of the Pamba river.

I feel my writing hand split at the wrist.

Dark tribute or punishment, who can tell?
You kiss the stump and where the wrist

Her hand feels like its split at the wrist. She cannot tell if it is a dark tribute with regards to her ancestors or if it is a punishment. She puts a
rhetorical question about who can help her in the interpretation of her vision. A vivid imagery of a kiss planted on a served limb is stated
as the manifestation of the reader’s appreciation. She has lost her completeness because of her diasporic condition.

Bone was, you set the stalk of a lotus.

There is a blue lotus in my grandmother’s garden,
its petals whirl in moonlight like this mountain.

A Lotus is set in place of the bone. She goes down the memory lane and thinks about the blue lotus in her grandmother’s garden. The
petals of the Lotus whirl in the moonlight. Her memories are associated with her writing and her emotions very intricately. This connection
is intervening with her diasporic condition and is making her extremely nostalgic.

II

An altar, a stone cracked down the spine,

a shelter, a hovel of straw and sperm
out of which rise a man and a woman

The altar may be linked to her Syrian Christian backgrounds. The stone of the altar has a crack down the spine. She might be hinting at the
discrepancies in the practise of Christianity in Kerala and abroad. The same religion differs in terms of customs and rituals with change in
the geographical location. This may be the reason why her traditional idea of Christianity is carrying a crack.

Shelter doesn’t just mean a place of solace; it can be an ideology or philosophy by which an individual works. Her diasporic condition has
given her a great exposure which is threatening her core. Straw is usually associated with shelter, food and support. The poet may be
looking for a small hint of support or hope. Sperm signify a new beginning or life. The poet is longing for a new beginning where this
confusing diasporic situation concludes. This can lead to something simple as the rise of a man and woman and a new life.

Alexander uses stones as a metaphor in a few different ways. One of these ways is to represent ideas and how those ideas turn into one's
art. Another way stones are used is to represent the memories of abuse that Alexander has hidden from herself for most of her life.

and one is a ghost though I cannot tell which

for the sharpness between them scents
even the orchids, a sharing of things
invisible till the mountain fetches
itself out of water out of ice out of sand
and they each take tiny morsels

Mountain stand for repressed memories

of the mountain and set it on banana leaves

and as if it were a feast of saints
they cry out to their dead and are satisfied.’

Banana leaves represent the culture of Kerala.

III

I have climbed the mountain and cleared

away the sand and ice using first my bare hands
then a small knife. Underneath I found

The poet is taking the initiative to bring out her repressed memories. Deeper memories are brought back with stronger efforts

the sign of the four-cornered world, gammadion,

which stands for migration, for the scattering
of the people. The desolation of the mothers

Gammadion represents migration and scattering. She doubts if the desolated mother represents herself.

singing in their rock houses becomes us,

so too the child at the cliff’s edge
catching a cloud in her palm

as stocks of blood are gathered on the plain,

spread into sheaves, a circlet for bones
and flint burns and the mountain resurrects itself.

IV

Tribe, tribute, tribulation:

to purify the tongue and its broken skin
I am learning the language again,

A return to the native language can be associated with the purification of the tongue.

a new speech for a new tribe.

How did I reach this nervous empire,
sharp store of sense?

In between the two cultures. She is learning about the new tribe to find a sense of belonging. She is puzzled about her arrival at this point

Donner un sens plus pur etc. etc.

does not work so well anymore,
nor calme bloc ici-bas.

She asks for pure meaning in French. Whatever it be nothing is going to be normal. The Romanian phrase says that everything has blocked
down here.

Blunt metals blossom.

Children barter small arms.
Ground rules are abolished.
The earth has no capitals.
In my distinct notebooks
I write things of this sort.

She writes of contradictions and her identity in her notebooks.

Monsoon clouds from the shore

near my grandmother’s house
float through my lines.

She goes down the memory lane and thinks of her past.

I take comfort in sentences.

“Who cares what you write?”
someone cries.

A hoarse voice, I cannot see the face.

He smells like a household ghost.
There can be no concord between us.

A patriarchal figure criticizes her writing. She makes it clear that they are connected with each other

I search out a bald rock between two trees,

ash trees on the riverbank
on an island where towers blazed.

Ash trees represent New York City

This is my short
incantation,
my long way home.

She writes an incantation for her home. The poem feels like a powerful incantation that can protect her home.

William, Rabindranath, Czeslaw,

Mirabai, Anna, Adrienne
reach out your hands to me.

She mentions some trans cultural and trans historical writers to find solace in her diasporic condition.

Now stones have tongues.

Sibilant scattering,
stormy grace!

The stones that represent memories have started to chant. As the stones represent the repressed memories it can be understood that the
repressed memories have started chatting. It is rising in to the corporeal world in the form of her poem.

The importance of the title

Blue Lotus signifies rebirth, enlightment, one canot find a true center of the flower , in the same way the poets center and core is unseen.
The blue colour signifies devotion.

Wallace Stevens – It is not enough to cover the rock with leaves- Rock stands for repressed memories …….It is repressed with weak factors
like leaves.. This is not a substantial solution.

Metaphor

uses stones as a metaphor for the memories repressed as well. Prior to the beginning of the poem there is a quote from Wallace Stevens,
“It is not enough to cover the rocks with leaves.” I think that this quote helps to set up part of the poem‟s purpose, which is to show how
the memories of abuse have come to light. Although Alexander had spent her entire life covering the rocks/memories within her
subconscious, it was not enough to keep them at bay forever. Alexander describes how she begins to recall these memories at the
beginning of the poem:

Twilight, I stroll through stubble fields

clouds lift, the hope of a mountain.
What was distinct turns to mist,
what was fitfu l burns the heart. (1-4)

The phrase “stubble fields” refers to a field of crops that has been harvested, leaving the field bare except for the short stalks left of the
plants. Her use of “stubble fields” represents how she cleared out unnecessary memories so that it would be easier to sift through the
memories that were left. The clouds are used to show the veil that has blinded her from the truth of the abuse, which is represented by
the mountains. Alexander is hoping to recover these memories from her subconscious, but the clouds are in her way. It is becoming
clearer that rocks, which are in their essence interchangeable with stones, are used by Alexander as a metaphor for the abuse.

On the third line Alexander is pointing out how her life used to be clear, but since the memories have begun to come back to her, her life is
no longer clear. The memories return to her in bits, and hurt her in the fourth line. This directly correlates with the part in Fault Lines
where Alexander explains how the abuse is brought to the surface of her recollection (240). In both sources Alexander explains how
memories resurfaced in fragments, causing her to work towards a painful enlightenment. After a stanza listing several poets who have
influence Alexander, she ends the poem, “now stones have tongues. / Sibilant scattering, / stormy grace!” (70-72). Once she can recall
these memories, she is free to write about them in poems such as this one. In addition, Alexander has formed this poem to start and end
on the same topic, bringing it full circle; the leaves have cleared from the rocks. These lines show that Alexander remembers the abuse
that her grandfather put her through, and that she can now write about it.

The Dual Meaning of Stones

Stones take on a dual meaning as well. Alexander makes it very clear in her memoir that stones can be interpreted as ideas and
experiences one takes in and transforms into art. However, one cannot ignore the context in which stones are used. It has become clear
that stones are often used in relation to the abuse. Alexander may have turned many of her “stones” into poetry, but as a child the stones
she swallowed that represented the abuse took years to digest. Now, decades after the abuse actually took place, stones finally “have
tongues,” and Alexander can reflect on the painful memories that have found their way back into her consciousness (“Blue Lotus” 70).

The concept of Hybridity.

In recent years, cultural hybridity constitutes one of the most crucial areas of study especially in contemporary literary theory, cultural
studies, history, philosophy, politics, and anthropology. Several concepts negotiate and interpret areas of resemblance and difference
among diverse cultures inherited within the layers of postcolonial texts. These various concepts including hybridity, difference, mimicry,
and ambivalence address cultural intersections that go far beyond the polarity of the self and the other, and East and West (Bhabha, 1994,
p. 36-39). Therefore, cultures do not exist in isolation but rather interact and overlap within a 'hybrid space' which Bhabha calls; "the third
space of enunciation" (p. 36-39). In this 'third space,' he observes, "a temporal movement and passage" occurs while diverse cultural
identities merge together into "a connective tissue that constructs the difference" (1994, p. 4). He further asserts that this 'third space'
tends to "open up the possibility of a cultural hybridiy that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy" and
consequently reshapes the definition of a new cultural identity (1994, p. 4). He actually sets his argument within various contexts including
minority cultures, contemporary and psychoanalytical theory, and colonial history to rethink the complex questions of cultural identity and
social agency among others.

In The Location of Culture (1994), Bhabha exploits the works of transitional writers and poets as Toni Morrison, Nadine Gordimer, V. S.
Naipaul, and Goseph Conradm, among others, to expose the creativity of their hybrid cultural forms while transcending the boundaries of
class, race, gender, nation, and location. It is of no less importance to note here that Bhabha’s work reconsiders the cultural politics of the
condition of being “a migrant” in the contemporary metropolis as a means to project those moments where multiple identities are
simultaneously born in the "third space" or 'in-between' cultures yielding to the construction of new and innovative hybrid identities
(1994, p. 86-88). In the literary field, for example, various critical studies negotiate not only the notion of 'third space,' but also the ways
identities move within spaces 'in-between' myriad cultures, across various genres, and more significantly, how these dynamic spaces of
production construct new hybrid identities.

Hybridity in the authors life.

As a postcolonial female subject on the periphery, the feeling of dislocation projecting a cracked body is often rigorous. On taking into
account her position as an Indian living in the city of New York, Alexander inhabits a critical 'third space' where two cultures; Asia and
America are fused within the multiplicity of place, and memory. However, this state of hybridity is not about the issue of mixing two or
more cultures together, but rather about the wide range of identities negotiated for the sake of inducing "other positions," like what
Bhabha (1990, p. 211) underscores; "the importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original moments from which the third
emerges; rather hybridity to me is the 'third space' which enables other positions to emerge" (1990, p. 17). Bearing this in mind, Alexander
is obviously aware of the impact of living in the fragile space between identity and place where several positions of the postcolonial,
migrant, or minor subjects do emerge; "who are we? What selves can we construct to live by? How shall we mark our space?" (1993a, p.
174). Here, she does speak not of a personal but communal predicament of migrant minority in America and probably elsewhere which
becomes a glaring metaphor hunting the majority of her poetry. These three successive questions reflect Alexander's fading identity and
remark at the same time a hybrid aesthetic that enables her to rearticulate the multiple facets of her selfhood on the edge of her world.

From the perspective of an educated Indian woman writer, settling abroad, mainly in America, one may locate complex translated spaces
of difference in her writing where, in terms of what Zapf' asserts; "hybridity is most often invoked and praised by migratory or minority
intellectuals with multiple identities" (1999, p. 304). In most volumes of her poetry, Alexander attempts to give voice to many migrant
subjects, especially south Asian American, inhabiting cultural gaps whom racism, history, and culture have made unheard. Within the
layers of the migrant narrative, therefore, Alexander's oeuvre navigates the juncture between social, physical, and psychic sites of her
world. In effect, the experience of dwelling on the borders of a multicultural metropolis like the city of New York, serves as Alexander's
muse inspiring a wide range of remarkable poems

In practice, situating the 'third space' on the poetic stage, the 'in-between' mode is thus dramatic whenever Alexander contemplates her
uprooted position in a hierarchy society. In the confessional tone of her memoir, Alexander relates many incidents where her fragmentary
conditions are exposed; "[t]hat's all I am, a woman cracked by multiple migrations. Uprooted so many times she can connect nothing with
nothing"(1993a, p. 3). Alexander obviously depicts here the dislocated self which is caught in 'the third space,' at the crossroads of
different cultural arenas. The contact zone is more complex in relation to her ethnic identity which is seen implicitly, in her reference to
rootlessness, disturbing history, and an overwhelming sense of emptiness. In addition, Alexander intentionally distances herself from the
confines of regional territories and undermines a travelling identity revealing the anguish of displacement and the split between body and
mind. From the lens of a migrant minority, Alexander (1993a) dwells upon this issue in her memoir and depicts its poignant impact on her
psyche.

Autobiographical elements of the third space in “The Blue Lotus”

It seems that not only memory becomes part of Alexander's psychic life, but rather a central metaphor enabling the poet to foster her
literary imagination to the multiplicity inherent in her metropolitan identity. She uses memory to weave a multifaceted tapestry of the
peculiar and uncanny space which her hybrid identity inhabits. In Alexander's "Blue Lotus," one of the remarkable poems in Raw Silk
(2004), she introduces a female persona who is presumably the poet in an engaging journey into the past that unfolds with intimate
landscapes of ancestors and homelands: - Monsoon clouds from the shore
near my grandmother’s house
float through my lines. ( 43, 52-54)

The affinity between the moment of 'in-between' of memory and the act of writing is noteworthy to infer. The tone communicates a
painful sense of nostalgia and a quest for belonging to an imaginary homeland. The stanza with its "Monsoon" rains and sparkling
"shores," captures India and equates the female persona with her ethnic identification. The following stanza grows more intricate than the
previous one as hidden feelings of unbelonging overtly float on the surface:

Twilight, I stroll through stubble fields

clouds lift, the hope of a mountain.
What was distinct turns to mist, what was fitful burns the heart,
When I dream of my tribe gathering by the red soil of the Pamba River ("Blue Lotus,"41, 1-6)

The stanza blends different emotions, perhaps confusing ones, as the female figure enters the space of memory where her split
subjectivities mingle between "twilight," "hope," red soil," "tribe," from on the one hand, and strolling bodies and burning hearts on the
other. Similarly, Alexander employs the strategy of dream as another layer embedded within the space of her memory to reveal a desire
to escape her foreign land or perhaps to relocate the "red soil of the Pamba River."Nevertheless, this desire remains obviously a figment of
a daydream that perhaps alters itself to a painful reality:

I feel my writing hand split at the wrist.

Dark tribute or punishment, who can tell?
You kiss the stump and where the wrist bone was,
you set the stalk of a lotus.
There is a blue lotus in my grandmother’s garden,
its petals whirl in moonlight like this mountain. ("Blue Lotus,"41, 7-12)

The lines continue to explore the space of memory in the poem, and expose more intricate areas of 'in-between' as we proceed further.
Within this space of self-identification, memory locates Alexander while meeting with her woman self-writing in a foreign world. The
meeting alters into a crucial confrontation that voices internal realities; the dilemma of unbelonging, the racialized fragmented body, and
the question of value of writing between "tribute" and "punishment." Therefore, the text swings back and forth among different positions,
dissimilar identities, and scattered pieces that are unable to make sense together. Furthermore, this rapid sequence of these 'in-between'
alternations configures the role of memory in Alexander's poetry and how it often appears as a hovering site of internal struggle. However,
the rhythm of the lines settles down as Alexander alludes to "a blue lotus" in her "grandmother’s garden" ("Blue Lotus,"41,11), or perhaps
as she temporarily reconnects the female writer identity with itself and illustrates how memory reshapes writing from the margins of the
world. In this sense, a wide array of Alexander's lyrics pictures female figures who are suspended between exclusion and integration in an
alien setting seeking to interpret their problematic position as minority migrants.

The Speciality of Blue Lotus.

 Her poem, Blue Lotus, particularly by how it distilled all the preoccupations that lay at the churning heart of her oeuvre: the lingering
unease of cultural displacement, and the dreamlike lyrical resolution in which memories of the red soil of the Pamba river of Kerala met
the ash trees on a New York riverbank, and the rhythms of Tagore and Mirabai mingled with William Wordsworth and Adrienne Rich.
Poetry for Meena was a spiritual address — hospitable enough to heal splintered memory and ruptured identity of every kind. And while I
sometimes longed for greater sinew and robustness in her lyrical yearning, what was indisputable was her deep faith in language and the
transformative power of poetry — faith in the ability of “a short incantation” to become the “long way home”.

The Power of Language in “The Blue Lotus”

In 'Blue Lotus', the poem featured in this edition, the poet explores the fraught question of belonging and locates a spiritual residence
where the red soil of the Pamba river in Kerala can meet the ash trees on a New York riverbank, where a ruptured identity can be healed
by the ancient magic of language, where a piecemeal and broken membership (with all its attendant complications: "tribe, tribute,
tribulation") can be restored to a wholeness that is more than the sum of its parts. It is a place in the heart that is hospitable enough to
accommodate a host of trans-cultural and trans-historical literary mentors: Wordsworth, Tagore, Milosz, Mirabai, Akhmatova and Rich.

It is language that makes this resolution possible. It is language that offers sanctuary. And it is language that offers strategy: a way to coax
life out of rock, a way to make stones sing.

Language in Alexander's poem liberates, empowers and eventually becomes a place in which to live. And thus "a short incantation" ends
up becoming a "long way home".

The poem as a medium to express her attitude towards certain social aspects.

Her poetry becomes the perfect medium for expressing anger, bitterness, hatred against the war, riot, communal animosity. The world
becomes a fragile place. It is losing its stability. The events of New York and India are the microcosm of the universal world struggle for
power. In “Blue Lotus”, Alexander embraces humanitarian philosophy as it was preached by poets and prophets belonging to various
nations and continents:

William, Rabindranath, Czeslaw Mirabai,

Anna, Adrienne
reach out your hands to me.[“Blue Lotus”]

The contemporary sorrows and sufferings blur the boundaries of nations and countries. They become one and the same. The poet laments
in “Rumours for an Immigrant”:

There is no homeland anymore

All nations are abolished…

“Raw Silk” and particularly the poem “Blue Lotus” becomes a brilliant example of trans-continental feelings. Meena Alexander transcends
the personal concerns and worries to embrace the universal perspective. The beauty and brutality, the calm and ferocity of the images are
really soul-stirring.

Language of Dislocation and Fragmentation in the Poetry of Meena Alexander.

The poet Meena Alexander was not an isolated personality from her realistic memoir. It is also discussed in the above sections about her
tendency of fictionalizing herself by the central character of her poems, and expressing her pain, her questions through their voice. In her
poem, “Fragments in August”, she asked, “Why am I a body?”, that also reminds the fragmented soul of her described in her memoir
(Sulimma, 2021). In the same poem, she said, “Even the Buddleia bush sheds its shadow when the moon glows”, which indicates the
pricked and targeted existence due to the racism and gender discrimination she had faced all along with her life. In another poem called
“Question Time”, the poet had said, “Hand raised in a crowded room- What use is poetry?”, indicating her dilemma regarding her works.
Moreover, this question also showed the everlasting dislocation she felt during her whole youth. The failed search of her for peace,
through her poetry, was clear from these types of lines. Running from one continent to another, and failing in gaining the desired stability,
the changes of location, the search for the roots, and the discrimination faced in every step were depicted her every time (Menozzi, 2020).
Poems like “Dog Days of Summer”, “Blue Lotus”, and “Muse” indicated her tiredness and the broken soul the writer carried throughout
her life.

Besided gender discrimination and the racism that pricked her every time she wanted to stand alone and free but also the sexual abuse,
that almost all the girls face in their domestic atmosphere are described by her in her book (Patil and Rathod, 2019). She mentioned that
her maternal grandfather abused her at an early age, turning from one of the beloveds to a demon she would want to destroy. The
question the lady asked at the beginning of the memoir, first published in 1993, was something like “Where did I come from? How did I
become what I am?” expressed the hidden inner pain of her failure in finding belongingness. After 2001, when the writer revised the
edition of the memoir and published it again, the search for her home was not changed. She was searching her maternal home, not only in
Sudan, where childhood is was passed but also in Tiruvallur, where her ancestral home was situated, and Allahabad, where she took birth
(Parikh, 2021). Another important point regarding her writings was that her writings were never just a personal account drawing, but
always she made it connected with the larger global perspective. In the new edition, the newly created dangers that were destroying the
world, like terrorism, the attack of 9/11, and the national trauma that shook the United States of America.

Alexander said about two types of fragmented memories in her memoir, one, according to her, was of “Flesh and Blood”, and the other
one is typically fragmented. She had mentioned it as “bits and pieces of the present, it renders the past suspect, cowardly, baseless.” The
eternal pain, the thirst for peace, and the trauma have always depicted the postcolonial disorder in her memoir.