New poems in 2013 appearing in: BEST OF THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY 1988-2012 (selected by Robert Pinsky), POETRY MAGAZINE, THE NEW REPUBLIC, SMITHSONIAN, 32 POEMS, MEASURE, FIELD, HAMPTON-SYDNEY POETRY REVIEW, and no less than four new anthologies, including the NORTON INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE, 11TH EDITION.
(2012 has seen new poems by Amit Majmudar appearing in THE NEW YORKER, SMITHSONIAN, THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, THE NEW REPUBLIC, POETRY MAGAZINE, THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY 2012, etc.)
Click on the covers below to purchase his first two volumes:
0',0' (Zero Degrees, Zero Degrees): Poems
Published by Northwestern University Press/TriQuarterly Books in 2009, this volume includes work that previously appeared in the Best American Poetry anthology (2007), Poetry Magazine, Poetry Daily, The Antioch Review, 32 Poems, The New England Review, The Dark Horse, Light Quarterly, FIELD, First Things, Gulf Coast, Image, JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Humanities, 150 Contemporary Sonnets, The National Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, Smartish Pace, TriQuarterly, and Salt Hill, and went on to be a finalist in the Poetry Society of America's Norma Faber First Book Award.
Click HERE to hear Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2, Raiders of the Lost Ark) read the sonnet "A Pedestrian" for National Poetry Month.
Other poems from the volume are available HERE at the Poetry Foundation Website.
Click HERE to hear Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2, Raiders of the Lost Ark) read the sonnet "A Pedestrian" for National Poetry Month.
Other poems from the volume are available HERE at the Poetry Foundation Website.
Heaven and Earth
The second collection of poetry won the 2011 Donald Justice Prize, selected by A. E. Stallings. From the prize citation:
"Western" literature begins, in the Iliad, with a clash of Occident and Orient, a fertile tension that Majmudar explores to explosive and imaginative effect in Heaven and Earth. In "Telemachus," the eponymous modern-day narrator from Ithaca, New York, seeks out his father-soldier who has disappeared in "wind-worn and war-winded Afghanistan," only to find him having gone native, "speaking casual Pashto with his brothers." Poet-as-archeologist sifts through the layers of Troy in "Hysserlik Ghazal," whose self-contained couplets going over the same ground prove form is metaphor. The aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan on US soldiers is explored with devastating, clear-eyed precision (a reminder that Majmudar comes from the tradition of poet-physician) in "The Walter Reed Sonnets." Though this book spans from Genesis to the present, from Afghanistan to America, from this world to the next, Majmudar is perhaps at his most engaging when charting a rocky personal geography, family and fatherhood. "Two cultures make a diplomat / But cannot make a soul," he remarks, wryly. But Majmudar shows us they can also make something rarer: an original poet.
"Western" literature begins, in the Iliad, with a clash of Occident and Orient, a fertile tension that Majmudar explores to explosive and imaginative effect in Heaven and Earth. In "Telemachus," the eponymous modern-day narrator from Ithaca, New York, seeks out his father-soldier who has disappeared in "wind-worn and war-winded Afghanistan," only to find him having gone native, "speaking casual Pashto with his brothers." Poet-as-archeologist sifts through the layers of Troy in "Hysserlik Ghazal," whose self-contained couplets going over the same ground prove form is metaphor. The aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan on US soldiers is explored with devastating, clear-eyed precision (a reminder that Majmudar comes from the tradition of poet-physician) in "The Walter Reed Sonnets." Though this book spans from Genesis to the present, from Afghanistan to America, from this world to the next, Majmudar is perhaps at his most engaging when charting a rocky personal geography, family and fatherhood. "Two cultures make a diplomat / But cannot make a soul," he remarks, wryly. But Majmudar shows us they can also make something rarer: an original poet.
