Out of the Nest: The Poetry of Meena Alexander and Mei‐Mei Berssenbrugge

Meena Alexander and Mei‐Mei Berssenbrugge are two poets who experienced dislocation and immigration. The loss of their first language seems reflected in their work. Intersecting with their maternal ties, the lost object and a lost language may later have become foci of mourning and also generative forces within their writing. The author considers their creativity in the shadow of absence and trauma of dislocation. In different ways for each, their writing becomes a nest, a container for loss and rupture, and the site of transformation of absence into growth.