WIT AND WISDOM

Both Samuel Menashe and Alastair Reid are in their mid-seventies, have lived abroad and in the States, write poetry, and reveal a wide range of feelings in their work, including humor. But in the end you are likely to find their differences more striking than their similarities. For one thing, Menashe focuses on poetry, while Reid’s work is in many genres (even children’s literature) and he is acclaimed for his translations of others’ work as well. Pablo Neruda is said to have told Reid, “I don't want you to translate my poems, I want you to improve them.” You will also detect Reid’s Scottish roots.

A typical spare and brief Menashe poem is “Family Silver”: “That spoon fell out / Of my mother's mouth / Before I was born, / But I was endowed / With a tuning fork.” And indeed, he is always alert to the possibilities of a poem in almost any situation. Born in New York City to immigrant parents, he served on the European front in World War II, lived in England, and studied at the Sorbonne, and both his humble roots and these experiences abroad inform his work. The recent poem “The Niche” describes the aging process and gives the title to his latest book, The Niche Narrows: New and Selected Poems. “The niche narrows / Hones one thin / Until his bones / Disclose him.” Menashe “compresses thought into language intense and clear as diamonds,” says Stephen Spender in the New York Review of Books.

Reid is a poet, a prose writer, a translator, and a traveler. Since 1958, he has been a staff writer and frequent contributor to The New Yorker magazine. He has published more than thirty books, and has translated the work of many Latin American writers, Neruda and Borges in particular.

Suggested Donation: $5 ($3 for members)

The readings at the HVWC are made possible in part by a grant from the Bydale Foundation; the Taft Foundation; and the Thendara Foundation; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and by Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government, corporations and individuals.

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