What He Did in Solitary

The prize-winning poet reflects on our spiritual loneliness and on the ties that both bind us and sustain us in a fractured world.

With his dazzling ability to set words spinning, Amit Majmudar brings us poems that sharpen both wit and knives as he examines our "life in solitary." Dividing the book into short sections around themes (Identity, Love, Grief, Art, History, Imperialism, Incarceration) and anchoring it with the stunning long poem "Letters to Myself in My Next Incarnation," the poet is both the Huck and Jim of his own adventures. He is unafraid to face human failings: from Oxycontin addiction to Gujarat rioting, he examines the fragility of the soul, the unchartability of pain, the reasons we kill and grieve and make love, often with dark comedy. The ironies of his own American otherness supply a bass note throughout, but even in confinement, Amit is a poet of exuberance and transcendence: "What I love here, / Poems and women mostly, / I know you can''t remember," he tells his future self, "But they were worthy of my love."