Amit Majmudar

A stunning first novel, set during the violent 1947 partition of India, about uprooted children and their journeys to safety As India is rent into two nations, communal violence breaks out on both sides of the new border and streaming hordes of refugees flee from blood and chaos. At an overrun train station, Shankar and Keshav, twin Hindu boys, lose sight of their mother and join the human mass to go in search of her. A young Sikh girl, Simran Kaur, has run away from her father, who would rather poison his daughter than see her defiled. And Ibrahim Masud, an elderly Muslim doctor driven from the town of his birth, limps toward the new Muslim state of Pakistan, rediscovering on the way his role as a healer. As the displaced face a variety of horrors, this unlikely quartet comes together, defying every rule of self-preservation to forge a future of hope. A dramatic, luminous story of families and nations broken and formed, Partitions introduces an extraordinary novelist who writes with the force and lyricism of poetry.

A Novel

Partitions

"A fresh, strikingly immediate and elegant verse translation of the classic, with an introduction and helpful guides to each section, by the rising American poet. Born in the United States into a secularized Hindu family, Amit Majmudar puzzled over the many religious traditions on offer, and found that the Bhagavad Gita had much to teach him with its "song of multiplicities." Chief among them is that "its own assertions aren't as important as the relationships between its characters. The Gita imagined a relationship in which the soul and God are equals"; it is, he believes, "the greatest poem of friendship. in any language." His verse translation captures the many tones and strategies Krishna uses with Arjuna--strict and berating, detached and philosophical, tender and personable. "Listening guides" to each section follow the main text, and expand in accessible terms on the text and what is happening between the lines. Godsong is an instant classic in the field, from a poet of skill, fine intellect, and--perhaps most important--devotion"--

a verse translation of the Bhagavad Gita, with commentary

Godsong

"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.""--

Poems

What He Did in Solitary

A fresh, strikingly immediate and elegant verse translation of the classic, with an introduction and helpful guides to each section, by the rising American poet. Born in the United States into a secularized Hindu family, Amit Majmudar puzzled over the many religious traditions on offer, and found that the Bhagavad Gita had much to teach him with its "song of multiplicities." Chief among them is that "its own assertions aren't as important as the relationships between its characters . . . The Gita imagined a relationship in which the soul and God are equals"; it is, he believes, "the greatest poem of friendship . . . in any language." His verse translation captures the many tones and strategies Krishna uses with Arjuna--strict and berating, detached and philosophical, tender and personable. "Listening guides" to each section follow the main text, and expand in accessible terms on the text and what is happening between the lines. Godsong is an instant classic in the field, from a poet of skill, fine intellect, and--perhaps most important--devotion.

A Verse Translation of the Bhagavad-Gita, with Commentary

As India is rent overnight into two nations, sectarian violence explodes on both sides of the new border, with tidal waves of refugees fleeing the blood and chaos. Fighting to board the last train to Delhi, Shankar and Keshav, six-year-old Hindu twins, lose sight of their mother and plunge into the whirling human mass to find her. A young Sikh woman, Simran Kaur, flees her father, who would rather poison his daughter than see her defiled. And Ibrahim Masud, an elderly Muslim doctor driven from the town of his birth, limps towards the new Muslim state of Pakistan.

a novel

The abundance

Abundance

A luminous, bittersweet novel of India and the American midwest, immigrants and their first-generation children, and the power of cooking to bridge the gulfs between them When Mala and Ronak learn that their mother has only a few months to live, they are reluctantly pulled back into the midwestern world of their Indian immigrant parents--a diaspora of prosperous doctors and engineers who have successfully managed to keep faith with the old world while claiming the prizes of the new. More successfully than their children--equally ill at ease with Holi and Christmas, bhaji and barbecue, they are mysteries to their parents and themselves. In the short time between diagnosis and deterioration, Mala sets about learning everything she can about her mother's art of Indian cooking. Perfecting the naan and the raita, the two confront their deepest divisions and failures and learn to speak as well as cook. But when Ronak hits upon the idea of selling their experience as a book and a TV documentary, India and America, immigrant and native-born are torn as never before. With grace, acuity, and wry compassion, Amit Majmudar has written anew the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations in The Abundance.

The Abundance

Poets on the march: 50 crucial poems written in response to the current political climate, selected and introduced by the Ohio Poet Laureate—and son of immigrants—Amit Majmudar. In a political atmosphere where language and even meaning itself are continually under threat, poetry has a critical role to play. And our poets have been responding—in the streets and at their desks, demanding a full accounting from themselves and from their nation. Majmudar's elegant introduction to these vital poems reminds us that "false stories take a lot of killing because they are made of language. Because they are made of language, though, they can be killed." From Solmaz Sharif and Eileen Myles to Kevin Young and Juan Felipe Herrera, American poets of diverse styles and strategies have contributed their truths: scenes from the front lines of resistance, and from the interior of our collective conscience. A final cento by Majmudar—a poem including at least one line or phrase from each of the poems in the volume—celebrates the robust multiplicity of voices in this book and in America now.

50 Poems Now

Resistance, Rebellion, Life

The prize-winning poet reflects on what sustains us in a sundered 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." Equally engaged with human history and the human heart, Majmudar transfigures identity from a locus of captivity to the open field of his liberation. In pieces that include a stunning central sequence, "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--often with dark comedy--the fragility of the soul, the unchartability of pain, and the reasons we sing and grieve and make war. All-American and multitudinously alone, dancing in his confinement, Majmudar 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."

Countless retellings, translations, and reworkings of the Ramayana's captivating story exist-but none are as vivid, ingenious and powerful as Amit Majmudar's Sitayana. Majmudar tells the story of one of the world's most popular epics through multiple perspectives, presented in rapid sequence-from Hanuman and Ravana, down to even the squirrel helping Rama's army build the bridge. However, above all, Majmudar focuses on the fierce resistance of Sita, letting us hear her voice as we have never heard it before.

Sitayana

A captivating, no-holds-barred collection of new poems from an acclaimed poet and novelist with a fierce and original voice Dothead is an exploration of selfhood both intense and exhilarating. Within the first pages, Amit Majmudar asserts the claims of both the self and the other: the title poem shows us the place of an Indian American teenager in the bland surround of a mostly white peer group, partaking of imagery from the poet’s Hindu tradition; the very next poem is a fanciful autobiography, relying for its imagery on the religious tradition of Islam. From poems about the treatment at the airport of people who look like Majmudar (“my dark unshaven brothers / whose names overlap with the crazies and God fiends”) to a long, freewheeling abecedarian poem about Adam and Eve and the discovery of oral sex, Dothead is a profoundly satisfying cultural critique and a thrilling experiment in language. United across a wide range of tones and forms, the poems inhabit and explode multiple perspectives, finding beauty in every one.

Dothead

'You cannot force two nations to live together any more than you can force two people,' he says quietly. Fatima smiles, feeling a slight thrill of victory. 'Divorce.' 'Pakistan.' Two intense, inflexible personalities duel over a question that will decide the fate of millions: one nation-or two? Jinnah, the consummate, ruthlessly analytical gentleman in a tailored suit, starts out sceptical of those who come to his door proposing a 'Land of the Pure', but ends up founding exactly such a country. Gandhi, the religious visionary in homespun khadi, experiments with Truth in his quest for one India-only to witness, in anguish, the bloody birth of two nations. The Map and the Scissors is a novel about the epic origin story of modern South Asia, brought to life by two London-educated lawyers, mirror-image rivals who dreamt the same dream of freedom-in catastrophically incompatible ways.

The Map and the Scissors

Alexander Pepple

Léon Leijdekkers

This is the seminannual Able Muse Review (Print Edition) - Winter 2015 issue, Number 20. This issue continues the tradition of masterfully crafted poetry, fiction, essays, art & photography, and book reviews that have become synonymous with the Able Muse—online and in print. After more than a decade of online publishing excellence, Able Muse print edition maintains the superlative standard of the work presented all these years in the online edition, and, the Able Muse Anthology (Able Muse Press, 2010). ". . . [ ABLE MUSE ] fills an important gap in understanding what is really happening in early twenty-first century American poetry." – Dana Gioia. CONTENTS: WITH THE 2015 ABLE MUSE WRITE PRIZE FOR POETRY & FICTION — Includes the winning story and poems from the contest winners and finalists. EDITORIAL — Alexander Pepple. FEATURED ARTIST — Léon Leijdekkers. FEATURED POET — Amit Majmudar; (Interviewed by Daniel Brown). FICTION — Paul Soto, Lynda Sexson, Andrea Witzke Slot. ESSAYS — N.S. Thompson, Moira Egan. BOOK REVIEWS — Stephen Kampa, Robert B. Shaw. POETRY — X.J. Kennedy, Wendy Videlock, Kim Bridgford, Peter Kline, Catharine Savage Brosman, Terese Coe, Steven Winn, Jay Udall, Beth Houston, Jennifer Reeser, Leslie Schultz, Ryan Wilson, Max Gutmann, Freeman Rogers, Dan Campion, Brooke Clark, David Stephenson, Autumn Newman, James Matthew Wilson, Athar C. Pavis, Jeanne Wagner, Elise Hempel.

a review of poetry, prose & art

Able Muse, Winter 2015 (No. 20 - print edition)

0° , 0° is where the equator and prime meridian cross, but it is also, in Amit Majmudar’s poetic cartography, "the one True Cross, the rood’s wood warped and tacked / pole to pole." Unlikely intersections lie at the heart of Amit Majmudar's first collection of poetry. Mythical, biblical, political, and scientific allusion thrive side by side, inspiring surprise and wonder. Majmudar’s training as a medical doctor is clearly at work as he is able to balance poetic forms requiring surgical precision—including the exceedingly difficult ghazal—with warmth and compassion for the world. Majmudar understands suffering on the large scale and the small, whether he is speaking up for the biblical character Job and "answering the whirlwind," or tallying the human cost of war at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

0°, 0°

Born in the United States into a secularized Hindu family, Amit Majmudar puzzled over the many religious traditions on offer and found that the Bhagavad-Gita had much to teach him with its "song of multiplicities." Chief among them is that "its own assertions aren't as important as the relationships between its characters . . . The Gita imagined a relationship in which the soul and God are equals." It is, he believes, "the greatest poem of friendship . . . in any language." His verse translation captures the many tones and strategies Krishna uses with Arjuna-strict and berating, detached and philosophical, tender and personable. The listener's guides to each section expand on the main text and what is happening between the lines in accessible terms. Godsong is an instant classic in the field, from a poet of skill, fine intellect, and-perhaps most important-devotion.

Mala and Ronak are adults now. They've married, begun their own families and moved away from the suffocating world of their first generation immigrant parents. But when they learn their mother has only months to live, the focus of their world returns to her home. Having shown little interest in the Indian cuisine they eat at every gathering, Mala decides to master the recipes her mother learned at her own mother's knee. And as they cook together, mother and daughter begin to confront the great divisions of their lives, and finally heal their fractured relationship. But when Ronak comes up with a plan to memorialise his mother, the hard-won peace between them is tested to its limits. Written with tenderness and wry compassion, Amit Majmudar has captured anew the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations.

Amit Majmudar

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