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American poet whose works were intense and concise as Psalms

The poet Samuel Menashe

, who died aged 85, was perhaps the last great generation of writers, bohemians in New York. With a career spanning nearly 60 years, a road that was his alone, scholars and critics, unable to draw any comparison committed to his contemporaries, were forced to return to the likes of Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins and William Blake.

Samuel resisted labels altogether and just say that his poems were "concise." He once told me, with some pleasure, during a visit to his parents in the 1950s, in the early stages of his writing, he told his mother that he had been busy working on a poem he had read the previous weeks. She asked, "How is it shorter?" A few years later, Stephen Spender, said Samuel "can compress an attitude towards life that has a huge story in three lines with a clear and strong as a diamond. "The poet Derek Mahon, said Samuel practiced the art of" squeeze and crystallization. "

We all knew that Samuel was the sum of their experiences, those who inspired and delighted. Here, for example, load, written by the poet Rachel Hadas:

The old wounds leave gaps

good

a case that can be stored

hugs

same ghosts

powers above, and thank you

whose domain does not fight in March

have everything done for my scars

Because everything now moves

follow everything that was once

and without loss of custody

me in my own space

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Samuel was raised in Queens by his parents, Russian immigrants. In 1943, he left Queens College, Fort Benning, Georgia, to join the World War II war effort as an infantryman. He saw action in many places, including the Battle of the Bulge, he always insisted on returning to her by name, "The Von Rundstedt offensive." He almost never talked about the war, even friends.

the end of the war, he returned to the GI Bill to get a degree at Queens College and then enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he received his Ph.D. in 1950. He returned to New York, where he took a few teaching positions in the short term, one at CW Post College. He said he was forced to stop the transmission of all their students, who have faced the conscription of war in Korea, if they could not pass their classes. Samuel was in the war experiences that most informed his philosophy of life, just to live each day as if it were your last. He never married and had no children.

First poem

Samuel came to him in a dream and began to wonder about poetry. He said he had "never met a poet and never dreamed of being a poet. Dead poets were immortal. "But he continued to find their voice in the poems and, having been unable to find a book publisher in America willing, he returned to Europe, get to know the poet Kathleen Raine. It is became an early supporter of his work and brought to the attention of Victor Gollancz, who published the name of Samuel Many Amado in 1961.

he coveted was always just out of reach until 2004, where he received first prize in the control of neglected Poetry Foundation in Chicago. This resulted in a price $ 50 000, with the publication of his new poems and selected by the Library of America, his first volume of a living poet. In his introduction to the remarkable book, Christopher Ricks wrote: "His small voice brings weighs Poems, by which Dr. Samuel Johnson honored with a 17th century master is now neglected (Sir John Denham) .. "Convey a much in few words and show the feeling with more weight than most'".

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