Poetry and Synthesis: The Art of Samuel Menashe

Abstract

Since publication of his first book, The Many Named Beloved (London: Golancz, 1961), little has been said about work of Samuel Menashe. The MLA Bibliography doesn't even know he exists. With exception of short essays by Donald Davie and Derek Mahon, critical record concerning Menashe consists of reviews, in which he has been briefly praised by such figures as Austin Clarke, P. N. Furbank, Stephen Spender, and Hugh Kenner.(1) The poet himself has been obliged to provide most comprehensive account of his intentions and accomplishments.(2) Menashe's neglect becomes all more striking when we consider how thoroughly his body of work exemplifies synthesizing tendency prevalent in poetry since Wordsworth remarked in his preface to Lyrical Ballads that the primary laws of our nature could best be illuminated by attention to the manner in which we associate ideas in state of (Wordsworth 39-40). More than century later, Robert Frost called excitement enthusiasm, and carried notion of association further. In Education by he observes that: Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, grace metaphors, and goes on to profoundest that we have. Poetry provides one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. (Frost 719) He goes on to make an extraordinary claim. have wanted in late years to go further and further in making metaphor whole of thinking (Frost 720). Frost implies that mind habitually generates metaphors, and by so doing makes what sense it can of world. In other words, mind's action is ineluctably process of comparison and synthesis, of creating, as Frost remarks, a gathering metaphor. (Even Charles Bernstein, while fulminating against readership or a common standard of aesthetic judgment, finds himself speaking of poetic form as matter of putting things together, or stripping them apart [1]; in other words, as acts of association or disassociation.) Menashe's work exemplifies associational and synthesizing power that Wordsworth and Frost deem central to poetry. He habitually juxtaposes and marries otherwise conflicting or diverse discursive categories. But if this is an old story with poets, why single out Menashe for notice? At least part of his claim to our attention consists in number of different kinds of categories he coordinates. We find him aligning animate and inanimate, visible and invisible, Hebrew and Christian tradition, literary and colloquial. Another, stronger claim on our attention is exceptionally spare, rigorously economical means by which he accomplishes his synthetic legerdemain. Of course, only series of close readings of his poems will demonstrate what I mean. Let me begin with an untitled poem from 1961 collection: A of little boats Tethered to shore Drifts in water . . . Prows dip, nibbling (Collected Poems 50) This poem's components are managed impeccably. The poem divides into two; lines 1 and 2 posit stasis, lines 3 and 4 dynamic. This effect arises from disposition of nouns and verbs. Nouns in first two lines (flock, boats, outnumber those in last two (water, prows). In contrast, verbs (drifts, dip) are pushed to last two lines, along with participle Furthermore, stresses fall on monosyllabic nouns ending lines 1 and 2, but more fluid lines 3 and 4 end with trochees. This establishes distinction between firm stress on stable materials (boats, shore) and wavering stress on liquid (water) and process (nibbling). In terms of imagery, poem successfully masquerades as pastoral scene - but on water. With flock we are invited to see little boats as so many aquatic sheep. Vocabulary aids effect; animation is granted to boats by virtue of poem's observation that they drift in still water. …