New & Selected Poems (with DVD)

by Christopher Ricks (Editor), Christopher Ricks (Editor), Samuel Menashe (Author), Pamela Robertson-Pearce (film-maker) (Illustrator)

New
Paperback
2009
$14.95

Samuel Menashe's poetry has a mysterious simplicity, a spiritual intensity and a lingering emotional force. For the past 50 years he has practiced his art of 'compression and crystallization' (in Derek Mahon's phrase) in poems that are brief in form but profound in their engagement with ultimate questions. As Stephen Spender wrote, Menashe 'compresses thought into language intense and clear as diamonds'. Intensely musical and rigorously constructed, Menashe's work stands apart in its solitary meditative power, but it is equally a poetry of the everyday. The humblest of objects, the minutest of natural forms, here become powerfully suggestive, and even the shortest of the poems are spacious in the perspectives they open. Expanded from its original Library of America compilation, this edition covers the full range of his work, from the early collections to very recent work, and includes a DVD of Life Is Immense: Visiting Samuel Menashe , a film by Pamela Robertson-Pearce. This features a visit to Menashe in the tiny apartment in New York's Greenwich Village where he has lived since the 1950s. Now in his 80s, Menashe still knows all his poems by heart, and between engaging digressions on poetry, life and death, recites numerous examples with engaging humor, warmth and zest.

Synopsis

Samuel Menashe's poetry has a mysterious simplicity, a spiritual intensity and a lingering emotional force. For the past 50 years he has practiced his art of 'compression and crystallization' (in Derek Mahon's phrase) in poems that are brief in form but profound in their engagement with ultimate questions. As Stephen Spender wrote, Menashe 'compresses thought into language intense and clear as diamonds'. Intensely musical and rigorously constructed, Menashe's work stands apart in its solitary meditative power, but it is equally a poetry of the everyday. The humblest of objects, the minutest of natural forms, here become powerfully suggestive, and even the shortest of the poems are spacious in the perspectives they open. Expanded from its original Library of America compilation, this edition covers the full range of his work, from the early collections to very recent work, and includes a DVD of Life Is Immense: Visiting Samuel Menashe , a film by Pamela Robertson-Pearce. This features a visit to Menashe in the tiny apartment in New York's Greenwich Village where he has lived since the 1950s. Now in his 80s, Menashe still knows all his poems by heart, and between engaging digressions on poetry, life and death, recites numerous examples with engaging humor, warmth and zest.

$14.95

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
Edition: Revised ed.
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Published: 10 Jun 2009
ISBN 10: 1852248408
ISBN 13: 9781852248406

Media Reviews

'Menashe is essentially a religious poet, though one without an orthodox creed. Nearly every poem he has ever published radiates a heightened religious awareness' - Dana Gioia.

Author Bio

Samuel Menashe was born in New York City in 1925, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. He served in the US infantry during the Second World War, and afterwards studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. He returned to New York in the 1950s where, with frequent sojourns in Britain, Ireland and Europe, he has lived ever since. He was first published in Britain, thanks to Kathleen Raine, in 1961, before he achieved any recognition in America, where he remained a marginal figure over five decades. In 1996 a selection of his work was published in the Penguin Modern Poets series. In 2004 he became the first winner of the Poetry Foundation's Neglected Masters Award, a prize that both pays tribute to his excellence and makes reparation for the years in which his achievements were overlooked. His New and Selected Poems, edited by Christopher Ricks, was published by the Library of America in 2005. An expanded edition, published with Life Is Immense: Visiting Samuel Menashe, a film on DVD by Pamela Robertson-Pearce, is published by Bloodaxe Books in 2009.