In 2004 Samuel Menashe became the first poet honored with the "Neglected Masters Award" given by Poetry magazine and the Poetry Foundation. The award was also to include a book to be published by the Library of America, which turned out to be a "Selected Poems" edited by Christopher Ricks.

More than twenty years earlier, Menashe joined Reader’s Almanac host Walter James Miller in the WNYC studio to talk about his poetry and its criticism.