The Earth in the Attic

Fady Joudah'sThe Earth in the Atticis this year's winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. In his poems Joudah explores big themesidentity, war, religion, what we hold in commonwhile never losing sight of the quotidian, the specific. Contest judge Louise Gluck describes the poet in her Foreword as "that strange animal, the lyric poet in whom circumstance and profession . . . have compelled obsession with large social contexts and grave national dilemmas." She finds in his poetry an incantatory quality and concludes, "These are small poems, many of them, but the grandeur of conception is inescapable.The Earth in the Atticis varied, coherent, fierce, tender; impossible to put down, impossible to forget."