Small Press Review
MENKE: The Complete Yiddish Poems of Menke Katz, translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav, Edited by Dovid Katz and Harry Smith. Hardcover, 914 pp., $35 (The Smith, Brooklyn, NY.)
Reviewed by Jared Smith
This is a heroic volume, throwing new light upon the works of Menke Katz, a
poet of two countries or of no country, who battled for liberal intellectual
expressionism throughout the world for seventy years.
Harry Smith and Menke's son Dovid illuminate the artistic turmoil comprising the time these poems were written…the battles over the meaning of freedom, democracy and social justice during wars, the McCarthy witch-hunt years, the Nixon Watergate years, while fire still burned in the belly of American poetry. These were times when poets stood tall, were more than entertainers, shaped culture – were locked away or applauded – but did the job of poets.
Menke was a virile, joyous, hard-fighting man for whom unnamable secrets of the universe were hidden within shadows of words that only a master of belief could bring forth. Understand this book, America! Let your soul howl in its pain, and your joy in fulfillment expand.
Menke's words in The Last Will:
Let us
Not become a tale of
Once-upon-a-time
A kaddish for
Your holy
People.