WestView

February 2010

Breathe Them in Slowly
Samuel Menashe was born in New York City in 1925 and has lived in the West Village since returning from Europe in 1951. He enlisted in the Army in 1943 and, after infantry school in Fort Benning, Georgia, was sent to combat duty in Europe. He saw action in France, Belgium—the Battle of the Bulge—and Germany. After the War, he studied at the Sorbonne where he received a doctorate in literature. He returned to the United States in 1951 and rented a small apartment in the West Village where he has lived ever since.

His first book of poetry, The Many Named Beloved, was published in London in 1961. In 2004, he was awarded the first Neglected Masters Award by the Poetry Foundation. His New and Selected Poems, edited by Christopher Ricks, was published by The Library of America, American Poets Project in 2005.

The following poems are taken from New and Selected Poems and appear here by kind permission of the author. Of the poem “November,” Mr. Menashe has written, “I saw these apples in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge, which we knew as the von Rundstedt Offensive.”

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November

Now sing to tarnish and good weathering

A praise of wrinkles that sustain us

Savory as apples whose heaps in attics

Keep many alive through old winter wars

Paradise

I wonder what the counterpart

Of the patriot is in Heaven

Or is our Father well pleased

By silence and implicit praise

And we are one with him breathing

Like a translucent plant which creates

Itself in each leaf—a paradise of light

Dreaming

Windswept

as the sea

at whose ebb

I fell asleep,

dreams collect

in the shell

that is left,

perfecting it.

Read other poems by Samuel Menashe and a short biographical sketch at the Poetry Foundation website: poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=181916

Or, read the article on Samuel Menashe (http://www.danagioia.net/essays/emenashe.htm) by Dana Gioia who recommends: “When you read these poems, breathe them in slowly. They will reward the effort.”

Submissions to the Poetry Corner may be emailed to: westview.editor@gmail.com

—W. J. Davidson, a West Village resident for 20 years, edits the Poetry Corner.

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