Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems: (American Poets Project #17)

by Samuel Menashe

Book Overview

Samuel Menashe (1925-2011) was the first recipient of The Poetry Foundation's Neglected Masters Prize in 2004 and this volume was published in conjunction with that award. Born in New York City, Menashe practiced his art of "compression and crystallization" (in Derek Mahon's phrase) in poems that are brief in form but startlingly wide-ranging and profound in their engagement with ultimate questions. Dana Gioia has written: "Menashe is essentially...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1931082855
• ISBN13: 9781931082853
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Library of America
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.8" x 7.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

NEVER HEARD OF HIM? WELL NOW YOU HAVE SO DO YOURSELF A BIG FAVOR AND READ HIM.

Well I must say that it is about time this poet, Samuel Menashe is receiving some of the recognition in this country he so richly deserves. Long known in Britain and other European countries, this American poet, who has lived most of his life in New York has had, for me, a bewildering problem having his work published in the United States, and certainly he falls into the category, as awarded by the Poetry Foundation - American Poets Project, as the winner of the Neglected Masters Award. It is quite difficult to find a pidgin hole in which to thrust Menashe's work into and I hate to try as I am quite averse to stuffing anything but pidgins into pidgin holes. His writing has been described as "spiritual," which indeed it is, but it certainly cannot be categorized as religious. His poems have been noted to be "Zen Like," which I suppose indeed they are. One of the problems of using either spiritual or Zen like is that both word mean so many different things to so many different people. Zen has been used to describe everything from golf to motorcycle repair and beyond, and spiritual is such a overused "buzz word," that I hate to apply it to a work that is...well, so different. I suppose I will use "contemplative and profound," which seems vague enough for my purposes in this review. I suppose the reader of Menashe's work can pick Zen like, spiritual, contemplative, profound, or if all else fails, make up their own descriptive word or description. Which ever you pick, I am sure it will work for you. I do know that the author of these poems is a word miser, or perhaps it would be better stated that he gets more mileage out of a single word than most poets get out of five or six pages. Sparse, bare to the bone, total impact, stunning and well...thoughtful....you really have to read this stuff to fully grasp the wonder of this writer's words and thoughts. In 1960 he wrote: Always When I was a boy I lost things - I am still Forgetful - Yet I daresay All will be found One day In 2006 he wrote: Always When I was a boy I lost things - I am still Forgetful - Yet I daresay All will be lost One day Autobiography: Who is mother Of more than one Is not the same As the mother Of an only son Who never became Anyone's father - still only a son As an old man - What I have not done Made me who I am. It is said that some of this mans work is of the rhyming mode and that is so but do take note that we never ever see silly rhyming couplets set mindlessly to paper. Rather than "rhyming" I prefer to use the word "rhythm" which I feel is a better description. There is a rhythm to this work and it is most noticeable, as with all poetry, when read aloud. Rather amazing stuff, really. Even though the author was a rifleman in the heat of things during the Battle of the Bulge, we are not talking any war poems here. On the other hand, no human I know could live through an experience like that and not be affected in some way and indeed, this does sho

Samuel Menashe: Neglected no more!

Menashe is getting at last the recognition so long overdue. His poetry combines wit with precision in its lean spareness. I hope that many more will discover this master. Bruce M. Shipman

The master of 'less is more'

I first became truly aware of the poetry of Samuel Menashe from a lecture given in Jerusalem by a young scholar, Jessica Sacks, who is writing her Ph.D. on Menashe, and the Hebrew poet, Yehuda Amichai. She read a number of extremely brief poems which the members of the audience took intense interest in, and found layer after layer of meaning in. Menashe is a poet's poet if one thinks of poetry as an art of condensation, of making maximum meaning in minimum space. His poems can be a few lines though often they reach ten or so. The lines too are short and often rhyme. Each word and even each syllable count. There is at times with all the multiple meaning, with all the implication upon implication a friendly kind of humor. Though he is alone and says he now believes he should have made a family he does not seem desperate or lost. Instead there is a certain optimism , a looking up , a kind of rising movement at the end of many of his poems. Menashe writes about himself, his body, what he sees in the little space of his apartment and in his own small world. He writes occasionally about the war he was a part of, and a good many of his poems relate to the Bible, and the Jewish tradition. Clearly there is something of Proverbs in his work, and he is a kind of 'wisdom- poet'. Emily Dickinson comes to mind for first comparison. The brevity and the assonances, the aphoristic quality of her lines, the paradox and probing are qualities Menashe shares with her. But Menashe's language is far more down home, and colloquial. I find many of his lines memorable and he is the kind of poet who I think will live through many memorizing the poems. Here is the title poem of an earlier Menashe collection. "The niche narrows Hones one thin Until his bones Disclose him" The poem is epigrammatic and a kind of puzzle. It is a concise and intense desciption of aging and death, a revelation of what will happen to all of us. Menashe gives us a small text, a few words and draws us to read and reread the work. Camus said that Kafka's genius was in his leading us to reread in this way. And the gift of Menashe's poetry will certainly be given more greatly to those willing to give it time, and know it from depth to greater depth. There are two clips of Menashe reading his poetry on YouTube and they show him to be not only a wonderful reader, but a warm, intelligent, humorous, modest and quietly ironic person. And this adds to the sense of how valuable the Poetry is.