The Poetic Life of Samuel Menashe

Samuel Menashe, who died 11 years ago this month, lived most of his life in a three-room railroad flat on Greenwich Village’s Thompson Street. He was reluctant to call himself a poet, though if accused, he wouldn’t deny it. In 2003, at the age of 79 and after decades of toiling in relative obscurity, he was awarded the Poetry Foundation’s first-ever “Neglected Masters Award.” This all-too-fitting capstone cemented Menashe’s legacy as a poet of unambiguously astonishing power who, several honors and admirers aside, was famous most of all for not being famous.

Looking for a thread of silver lining, it might be tempting to pigeonhole Menashe as a poet’s poet—he had many celebrated champions, among them , , , , and, perhaps most meaningful for Menashe, , who praised Menashe’s work in the Irish Times and even recited some of it on the radio. Menashe’s most, who helped him find a London publisher for his first collection and contributed its forward. But to say that Menashe had any major impact on his peers or the generations that succeeded them would be a stretch. When, as an experiment, I googled “influenced by Samuel Menashe,” it took .57 seconds to return exactly zero results.