Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems, Expanded Edition (American Poets Project) [Hardcover]

Samuel Menashe (Author), Christopher Ricks (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 6, 2005

Samuel Menasche has created a poetic mode that is all his own: Compresed, alert to linguistic surprise, capable of disclosing ultimate meanings in the most ordinary phenomena. Emerging out oa a life in shich, the poet's words, "each day was the only day", Menasches work has a mysterious simplicity, a religious intensity, and a lingering emotional force.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Library of America (October 6, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931082855
• ISBN-13: 978-1931082853
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 4.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #523,690 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The master of 'less is more', September 17, 2007

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems, Expanded Edition (American Poets Project) (Hardcover)

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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Take my Poems, December 10, 2010

By 

Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems, Expanded Edition (American Poets Project) (Hardcover)

A recent essay titled "A Deeper Consideration" by the poet, essayist and journalist, Clive James explores the virtues of concision, reflection, and thought in poetry as opposed to mere wordy surface glitter or confessional self-expression. James discusses the works of the American poet Samuel Menashe (b. 1925( to illustrate his claims of what is valuable in poetry. Here is a short poem by Menashe titled "Beachhead" that James carefully discusses.

"The tide ebbs
From a helmet
Wet sand embeds"

Menashe served as an infantryman during WW II at the Battle of the Bulge. Other than this poem, Menashe wrote little about his war experiences. Yet. James properly observes that "there is a whole war" in these tight three lines. James continues: "[The poet] makes his war a nation's war. The deeper consideration is that he was one among many, and, unlike too many, he lived to speak. That he speaks so concisely is a condition of his testament: consecration and concentration are the same thing. This is a world away from the expression of the self. This is bedrock."

Born to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Menashe described his poetical influences as the short poems of William Blake and the Hebrew Bible. He was an obscure figure in American poetry until the Poetry Foundation established a "Neglected Masters Award" for Menashe on the occasion of his 80th birthday. At the same time, the American Poets Project, part of the Library of America, published this volume of Menashe's "New and Selected Poems" in 2005, with a short essay by Menashe, quotations from various poets on his work, and an introduction by Christopher Ricks. In 2008, the American Poets Project edition was expanded to include ten additional poems. I am using the 2008 edition in this review.

Menashe's poetry is short, deeply thought through, and filled with meaning. It doesn't categorize well as either modernist or traditional. The poems are generally in brief lines with every word, and the form, telling. The poems often rhyme in part and make great use of alliteration, homynyms,and suggestion. Some of the poems celebrate the everyday. They frequently are set in New York City where Menashe has lived in the same unpretentious walk-up flat since the early 1950s. But many of the poems are rural, set in woods, fields, or near the water. Death, including the poet's pending death (Menashe is still active), his friends, and his mother's is a preoccupation. Love and love affairs are described, if only elliptically. Some of the poems are whimsical. Most of poetry reaches out beyond its few words to show a concern for spiritual questions.

Here is a poem titled "Windows: Old Widow" which several contributors to the American Poets Project volume use to illustrate the character of Menashe's art.

"There is a pillow
On the window sill --
Her elbow room --
In the twin window
Enclosed by a grill
Plants in pots bloom
On the window sill"

I want to quote two poems out of many that I particularly liked that I have not seen referred to by other writers on Menashe. The first, set in New York City, as is the above poem, is titled "Tenement Spring".

"Blue month of May, make us
Light as laundry on lines
Wind we do not see, mind us
Early in the morning"

The second poem is untitled and is part of a series of little poems that comment upon Biblical passages.

"Leah bribed Jacob
With mandrake roots
To make him
Lie with her

Take my poems"

Menashe's poems reminded me of the short poetry of Charles Reznikoff (1894 -- 1976). Like Menashe, Reznikoff was born to immigrants from Eastern Europe. Reznikoff wrote in obscurity for years in a style that was both concentrated and highly personal. Like Menashe, Reznikoff lived in New York City, and many of his poems have an urban setting. And both writers show a strong Jewish influence even though neither appears traditionally religious.

Readers interested in modern poetry that is slightly off the beaten path will love this collection of Menashe's poems. As with much else, the Library of America is to be commended for publishing this volume and making Menashe's work available.

The essay by Clive James discussed in this review is taken from the September 2010 issue of "Poetry" magazine.

Samuel Menashe died on August 22, 2011.

Robin Friedman

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read This Book, July 10, 2010

By 

Aunt Saidee (Santa Cruz CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems, Expanded Edition (American Poets Project) (Hardcover)

I discovered this poet through a blog called "37 Days." So glad I looked for his book and ordered it: it's fabulous! His work is so spare yet so profound. I find it hard to describe or write about poetry (well, I used to do it when in college in the dark ages...) because it speaks for itself.

I recommend this book and this poet with no reservations. If you are a poet, you will love it. If you love poetry, you will appreciate this stunning work.