A God at the Door

The illuminating fourth collection from Doshi (Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods) wrestles with the anxiety and existential despair of environmental peril, the pandemic, and the oppression of marginalized peoples. A native of India, Doshi writes with clarity and melodic language of anti-immigrant sentiment in "The Stormtroopers of My Country": "sir you promised us good/ governance but the evidence is mounting of brown/ soldiers massacring brown shops mosques stick// with the pogrom." In "Tigress Hugs Manchurian Fir," a concrete poem in the shape of a tree, she reflects on an award-winning photograph, meditating on the strength required to contend with the 21st century's greatest challenges: "I begin my diaries with Chipko means to hug in Hindi./ And even though I know the history of the ecofeminist/ embrace is fierce, not cute, it helps me understand the gap/ between my life and the denuded hillside." Turning inward in "My Loneliness Is Not the Same as Your Loneliness," she writes: "Singers say they hear the next note/ before they sing it. My loneliness/ is something like that. I know/ not just what it is, but how it will sound." With her finger firmly on the pulse of the zeitgeist, Doshi crafts vivid poems that are a balm for a fraught world. (Nov.)