At the heart of In a Broken Star, we find the themes of diaspora and quest romance, prophecy and gnosis, which have long suffused Norman Finkelstein's poetry. The central poem of the book, "The Adventures of Pascal Wanderlust," is a long narrative featuring an uncanny protagonist of indeterminate gender, age, and cultural identity, a bookish, wandering mage with mysterious links to the Immanent Foundation, the equally uncanny institution from Finkelstein's...