The 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 will         not turn away from what he sees--ordinary people struggling against, and         sometimes breaking on, the wheel of their fate. The Broken World         is a deeply humane and accomplished first book--probing, watchful, compassionate,         and necessary."         -- Edward Hirsch       "I challenge anyone to be unmoved by The Broken World. CafagÑa         never gives up in these difficult, heart-rending poems." -- Jim Daniels,         editor of Letters to America: Contemporary American Poetry on Race       The Broken World, the powerful debut of a poet of great depth         and maturity, begins with narratives of individuals caught up in circumstance--a         distressed girl on a Detroit overpass, a boy shooting baskets at a crisis         center. By the end of the slim volume, Marcus CafagÑa has led us         through the postwar New York of Jewish Holocaust survivors to his native         Michigan, where his marriage ended tragically with his wife's suicide,         a death that has come to symbolize for CafagÑa the confusion and         madness of the twentieth century.