Senegal Taxi

National Book Critics Circle winner Herrera (Half the World in Light) has always written passionately about human rights issues. Here he expands his purview to encompass genocide in Darfur, offering a book-length poem that takes in the voices of three children who have survived a Janjaweed attack on their village, a U.S. TV news anchor who interviews a former Janjaweed, an ant that offers a ground-level perspective on slaughter, a Kalashnikov AK-47 used in the killing ("I came down the mountain in full gallop/ With my sister Mortar"), and others. Most affecting are the voices of the children: one-eyed Abdullah, the village girl Sahel, and Ibrahim, who relates part of the story from the taxi he now drives in New York ("I learn inside this taxi, Ms. You tell me your story. I tell you story too"). Throughout, Herrera's voice is urgent and his imagery as sharp-edged as the sun. Formal devices—strings of unpunctuated words suggesting desperation, typescript for the TV interview, the poems labeled "mud drawings" that relate the time the children spent hiding in a cave—add immediacy and interest.