Catholicism and Poetry #6: Samuel Menashe: A Jewish Poet a Catholic Should Love

Can a Jewish Poet write poetry a Catholic should love?  Did not St. Paul say we were spiritual Jews?  Our Bible begins with the Hebrew story and continues onto our unique beliefs and our Catholic poetry is rooted in the bible.

A Jewish poet who has labored in relative obscurity for years, Samuel Menashe, won Poetry Foundations Neglected Masters Award in 2006 and since he has become the darling of a New York literary scene that once snub him.  He writes terse, even taut poems with Zen like clarity and pointedness, but they are often on biblical or other Jewish themes.  He rhymes his short little poems, something now unconventional, and yet in many other ways his poems are completely modern.  Modern in language and influenced by existentialism, yet they touch the ancient additudes of the Hebrew people.

My favorite poem is  Adam Means Earth.    Are we not all born of the earth?  Menache plays on the fact that in the ancient semetic tounges Adama was earth, while Adam meant man.

The poem can be found at:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=181927

In this poem he draws out the essential humility of the human condition, when we chose to embrace it.  When he  speaks of "the man  whose name is mud" is am reminded of the scene in Francesco where Mickey Rourke, playing St. Francis, rubs his face in the mud and says "I am so low, I am lower than the dirt."
Menache says "dust Adam became" aluding to our death, and yet also speaking ou our life, what we are made of.  He asks "Was he his name" which perhaps we should all ask of ourselves.  Have I lived up to my humble origins?


In august of 2006 NPR carried a wonderful audio story on Menasche, below.



Here is a wonderful u-tube of Menashe talking and reading



Here is a brief biography:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Menashe

And great little interview recored on a blog.

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/blog/culture/a-visit-with-samuel-menashe/

And some more poems of Menashe.

http://www.archipelago.org/vol8-4/menashe.htm