Earth in the Attic - Paperback

by Fady Joudah (Author), Louise Gluck (Foreword by)

Fady Joudah's The Earth in the Attic is the 2007 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. In his poems Joudah explores big themes--identity, war, religion, what we hold in common--while 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 Attic is varied, coherent, fierce, tender; impossible to put down, impossible to forget."

Author Biography

Fady Joudah is a Palestinian-American medical doctor and has served as a field member of Doctors Without Borders. He has published six volumes of poetry and translated several collections, including Ghassan Zaqtan's Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me. His prizes and awards include the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize. He lives in Houston, TX.