Samuel Menashe - OBM

Inklings sans ink

Cling to the dry

Point of the pen

Whose stem I mouth

Not knowing when

The truth will out

- Samuel Menashe

I met Samuel Menashe, a brilliant, out of the box, unheralded, and under-published poet at a joint reading he did with acclaimed and super-famous poet, Dana Gioia on May 9, 2002. The reading was amazing. I knew I was in the presence of transcendence. Despite being a politician as well as a poet Gioia struck me as a good man. He had included Menashe in an anthology he edited and he was responsible for Menashe being known enough to be invited to that reading, part of a series of pairs of connected older and younger poets. Though he often writes long poems himself, Gioia appreciated Menashe's consistently short (under ten terse lines) works. Here's a nice concise poem by Dana Gioia, from Interrogations at Noon:

Unsaid

So much of what we live goes on inside–
The diaries of grief, the tongue-tied aches
Of unacknowledged love are no less real
For having passed unsaid. What we conceal
Is always more than what we dare confide.
Think of the letters that we write our dead.

Gioia wrote a beautiful introduction to Menashe's book, The Niche Narrows. "Menashe is essentially a religious poet, though one without an orthodox creed. Nearly every poem he has ever published radiates a heightened religious awareness. His central themes are the unavoidable concerns of religious poetry - the tension between the soul and the body, past and present, time and eternity."

I am grateful to Gioia for the his inscription in his book Interrogations at Noon, which expressed "best wishes, said and unsaid."

Menashe blew me away. I asked him to be my poetry mentor. He said he was too old to do that, and that I could learn from reading his poems. I wanted to buy his book but had no cash on me. I told him I'd get money at an ATM and be back. He was surprised and quite appreciative when I returned with cash in hand.

I have mixed feeling about the phenomenon of "acharei mot - kedoshim - emor," the fact that the best career move people often make is to happen to die. On the one hand it's good that people are finally appreciated. On the other hand is there any sadder commentary on human nature?

The world's not going to win with me on this one. If Menashe, who passed away on August 22 at age 85, is now heralded I'll feel that it's a shame that it didn't happen while he was alive and wanting it. On the other hand, if he continues to go unnoticed it'll just be more of the same tragic neglect of a master (he was actually granted the Neglected Master Award). In a way he's

already gotten more attention ten days after he's gone away than he did in his lifetime. Major publications carried articles about him when he left the world. Perhaps the best one I've seen, and the newest one, is in the Economist. They say that Menashe was "the unresting representative of thousands of other dogged and neglected poets, scribbling and dreaming at their windows in all the cities of the world."

Now

By Samuel Menashe

There is never an end to loss, or hope

I give up the ghost for which I grope

Over and over again saying Amen

To all that does or does not happen--

The eternal event is now, not when