Broken World

Selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as one of five volumes published in 1996 in the National Poetry Series"Marcus CafagÑa is a poet who shies at nothing, who willnot turn away from what he sees--ordinary people struggling against, andsometimes breaking on, the wheel of their fate. The Broken Worldis a deeply humane and accomplished first book--probing, watchful, compassionate,and necessary."-- Edward Hirsch"I challenge anyone to be unmoved by The Broken World. CafagÑanever gives up in these difficult, heart-rending poems." -- Jim Daniels,editor of Letters to America: Contemporary American Poetry on RaceThe Broken World, the powerful debut of a poet of great depthand maturity, begins with narratives of individuals caught up in circumstance--adistressed girl on a Detroit overpass, a boy shooting baskets at a crisiscenter. By the end of the slim volume, Marcus CafagÑa has led usthrough the postwar New York of Jewish Holocaust survivors to his nativeMichigan, where his marriage ended tragically with his wife's suicide,a death that has come to symbolize for CafagÑa the confusion andmadness of the twentieth century.