Three Metamorphose

This difficult yet vibrant work from poet and radiologist Majmudar (What He Did in Solitary) weaves Muslim, Hindu, Old and New Testament, historical, and literary narratives into a three-part multicultural epic. It begins with the fallen angel Azizal, a version of Satan, who preys upon Adam and Eve–like beings until they acquire knowledge and human suffering. The middle section is a Greek-influenced “screenpoem” (“Creon/Pilate”), while the third segment, “Metamorphoses,” is a collection of Ovid-influenced stories featuring Brahma, Vishnu, lovers Shakti and Shiva, and Charles Darwin, among others, as well as the poet trash-talking himself: “More bedtime stories? Damn it, Amit, all/ that superstition’s superseded./ Another Book of dreck? Which of your thirty-/ three/ thousand gods has time to read it?/ It’s colorful and all, I grant you, but you’re/ a radiologist.” Imbuing myth with echoes of Milton, Shakespeare, Eliot’s The Wasteland, and the Beatles, Majmudar teases the reader with comic-book action, witty asides, and erotic coupling, but it is the verse section that triumphs: “Do not fear, he gestures. Choppers locust/ over the Hindu Kush./ This is the city, haloed like a smear/ of penicillin in a petri dish,/ killing itself a radius of clear.” Readers who are up for the challenge will find this a worthy collection. (Oct.)