Things My Grandmother Said

The formally dazzling latest from Majmudar (What He Did in Solitary) features sonnet crowns, long ghazal sequences, and Juvenalian satire, all paying homage to the women he admires, from his grandmother, mother, wife, and daughter, to Wonder Woman, Hindu goddesses, poet friends, and a nurse in a kill zone. Couplets such as “Time is a circle I can put to use:/ a wheel to roll things back, a crown, a noose,” butt up against the sagacity of his grandmother, whose old-country pronouncements are a highlight: “Sure, the Ganga is holy,/ but who told you to drink from it?” Other memorable remarks include “You know why they call it India/ ink, don’t you? When they burn us alive/ we write poems with the soot,” and “Be a poet, okay,/ But be something else, too.” A central section of erotic love poems (“The woman is the word. I have married into mystery”) is followed by witty takes on modern life (“Litcoin”; “Unnatural Intelligence”) and musings on invisibility (“School of Withcraft and Wizardry”). It’s a tour de force. (Apr.)