Amit Majmudar's DOTHEAD

Well, in line with my review of another modern alliterative poet, Lancelot Schaubert, I picked up Dothead (2016) by Amit Majmudar. As a way of supporting his work, I've posted reviews on Goodreads and Amazon ... and now here!

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I bought this book almost at random, having seen one of Majmudar’s published poems elsewhere, and for anyone who enjoys a very musical formalist poet, Majmudar will not disappoint.

There’s not a ton of esoteric allusions in Dothead, but there’s a fair bit of literary history, so if you’ve got a bit of background on canonical 20th-century authors, particularly the modernists, Dothead will provide some extra oomph. For instance, in his “James Bond Suite,” I thought I saw direct ties to Hemingway (“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”) and Yeats (“Easter 1916”) tied very cleverly into standard James Bond tropes. Likewise, Majmudar seems particularly enamored of the First World War and Wilfred Owen, two of my own personal favorites. Majmudar’s “Love Song for Doomed Youth” in particular seems like a tribute. Plus, I suspect Majmudar got his penchant for full consonant rhymes from Owen. One example is the haunting “Steep Ascension,” a poem done in tercets whose first stanza chimes on will/well/wall.

Dothead is filled with innovation metrical decisions like that. Most are quite beautiful, although sometimes the poet’s delight in wordplay doesn’t always seem quite appropriate to the theme. Politically, the poems are about what you’d expect – the poem “T.S.A.” (about going through airport security) is wonderfully musical, but the basic idea, while not untrue, has become trite.

Still, with these minor criticisms out the way, I deeply enjoyed Dothead, especially its title poem (“Dothead”); several metrically innovative poems like the aforementioned “Steep Ascension”; and the clever “Augustine the Hippo.” Plus, since I’m always partial to odes to punctuation, everyone should check out “His Love of Semicolons.”

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