Heaven and Earth

Winner of the 2011 Donald Justice Poetry Prize "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. -A.E. Stallings Judge, 2011 Donald Justice Prize