Paris Review online, by Brian Gittis: A few months ago, the first poetry reading I ever attended in New York
came back to haunt me, almost literally. I was folding laundry on a
Sunday night, listening to iTunes on shuffle, when a ghostly, familiar
voice issued out of my speakers, interrupting the music. Soft, deeply
resonant, and a little like Boris Karloff...
I couldn’t have told you then what was so powerful about his poems,
but I’ve since had years to think about them—so here’s a quick example.
Despite their small canvases (often between four and ten very short
lines), Menashe’s poems hold an uncanny amount of space. For instance,
“Old Mirror,” which was among the first poems of the night:
In this glass oval
As love’s own lake
I face myself, your son
Who looks like you—
Once we were two