Atmospheric Embroidery

Alexander (Birthplace with Buried Stones) strives to articulate how an “invisible grammar holds us in place” as she considers ways that Western culture attempts to mitigate otherness—to contain and subdue the implicit threat to the social order, that “Earthly unsettlement.” Oscillating among familiar forms, Alexander cultivates a tension between form and content as her philosophical interventions frequently transcend the neat and seemingly legible structures they inhabit. In “Phillis Wheatley Suite” she writes, “Afterwards to pour yourself/ Into words, into that strangest lyre, strings sucked// Tongue torqued, fierce filigree/ God, Master, White, Ethiop, words sentient, insolvent.” However, the work’s texture is somewhat conventional and does not do justice to Alexander’s investigations of gender, language, and power. For example, compared to “Ancestors startled in sepia, eyes wide open,” passages such as “One by one she composed her lines/ She numbered each with finicky care, struck—Send” are bound to underwhelm. Readers may find themselves wishing to see Alexander’s fierce and ambitious thinking reflected to a greater extent in her words and phrases. Alexander’s collection succeeds most in charged moments when the hybridity of the language invites complexity into her meditations on race, alterity, and gender. (June)