A Neglected Master

“Samuel Menashe,” writes Sean Curnyn , “is an American poet who writes American poetry. He lives in New York City, by all accounts a simple existence (almost absurdly apt for the neglected poet) in the same old tiny walk-up apartment he has occupied for many decades.” Yet, as Curnyn writes in his recent review of Menashe’s latest collection , the eighty-three-year-old poet and frequent First Things contributor is truly a master of compressed lyric poetry. Here’s a taste:

Salt and Pepper

Here and there
White hairs appear
On my chest—
Age seasons me
Gives me zest—
I am a sage
In the making
Sprinkled, shaking

“That is,” says Curnyn, “an astounding and poignant—yet restrained—evocation of age and of the aging man himself. It lifts up the gifts that aging brings along with it, and subtly pleads the case for treasuring the aged (I am a sage) while not denying but instead subversively confronting the decay of the body: Sprinkled, shaking. And it does this and more while at the same time gently and humorously interweaving all of those images of seasoning and spice, and all in an absolute total of just twenty-four words.”

Menashe’s poems are wonderfully human. Yet they also reach, with a touch that is at once light and profound, to God. In Curnyn’s words: “You might say that some of the poems resemble abbreviated psalms written by a so much more sly and discreet psalmist. Yet, that humble praise for the Creator and thankfulness for the gift of life which permeates the poetry does not preclude intense and painful meditations on loss and on mourning, and an underlying deep and even melancholy yearning. Neither does it preclude humor and indeed mischievousness.”

How does he succeed? Curnyn lets the poet have the final word:

Improvidence

Owe, do not own
What you can borrow
Live on each loan
Forget tomorrow
Why not be in debt
To one who can give
You whatever you need
It is good to abet
Another’s good deed