Memory Tricks

“In Zev Shanken’s poetry, time is a magician that cuts the writer in half. Then cuts him again, then again, then again. Until, at last, there’s nothing left but the pieces of self that we call poems. In ‘Memory Tricks,’ his best poem, a loving son tries to console his mother for her loss of memory. You cannot name anything because you cannot remember anything. You cannot learn anything

because you cannot connect the old and the new. And yet, miraculously, through some trick of love, you still know how to say a blessing. Life goes on—even after memory fails you, your life remains holy. There’s much more of this in Shanken’s work. A lifetime of grappling with love and suffering, with the redemptive paradoxes of wisdom and failure. Shanken is a poet of witty seriousness

and earned insight on each subject he touches.”

—Stephen Bluestone, winner of the Thomas Merton Prize

“The combination of deep knowledge, revelation, and wit makes Zev Shanken’s collection of poems an unexpected and pleasurable read.”

—Esther Cohen, author of Breakfast with Alan Ginsberg

“Wisdom flows through this book along with wise humor; not that Zev Shanken is a wiseguy, but sometimes. . . . Tracing a life richly lived, this scheme provides only a subtle structure for these cleverly constructed poems placed expertly in a flowing arc that culminates in an insightful pastiche of rabbinic literature.”

—John J. Trause, author of Exercises in High Treason

“Zev’s poetry surprises and delights on the first reading. At the second reading

you realize: These are poems.”

—Rabbi Rim Meirowitz, Rabbi Emeritus, Temple Shir Tikvah,

Winchester, Massachusetts