The niche narrows Hones one thin Until his bones Disclose him So wrote poet and sage Samuel Menashe in one of his numerous works addressing death, Menashe’s first Muse and greatest obsession. As he often mentioned in conversation, he became a poet at the age of 19, having survived the notoriously dangerous World War II…
Those of us who have participated in the Jewish poetry scene in New York City over the last decade might argue that the journal Mima’amakim invented it. Though Jewish women and men have been performing and publishing poetry for many decades as part of a thriving New York poetry scene, Mima’amakim established the first readings…
Each Thursday, The Arty Semite features excerpts and reviews of the best contemporary Jewish poetry. This week, Rodger Kamenetz introduces the poetry of Samuel Menashe. This piece originally appeared on December 5, 2003, as part of the Forward’s Psalm 151 series. It is being published here online for the first time. Every death before mine…
“April,” famously wrote T.S. Eliot in “The Waste Land,” “is the cruellest month.” Despite this underwhelming endorsement, the Academy of American Poets inaugurated April as the National Poetry Month back in 1996 and, every year since, has hyped up a surge of readings, publications and all other things poetry-related. In the Jewish world, the initiative…
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