"The Modigliani Exhibit"
Sample Poem from The Present Abandoned
I always liked Amedeo’s elongated necks,
unseeing eyes and reclining nudes.
Lola, Adrienne and Jeanne gaze at me,
woman to woman,
and you are the ghost hovering behind me.
Music was your love, not paintings,
yet you tagged along when I toured the galleries.
Now, I linger at a portrait of Anna Akhmatova
and stop before the Greek caryatids,
sensing you meandering through the rooms.
We were a couple once, part of the admiring crowd,
and I was not a stranger
envious of the pair standing beside me,
his hand reaching up
to caress the nape of her neck, unaware
they are the exhibit.
The Present Abandoned
“…these are poems that arise from necessity, that are informed by a fierce intelligence and a willingness to look at everything exactly as it is, and then to filter that through music and wit and a realistic and also open-to-the-emotional lens. It’s the kind of poetry that makes me feel like my life is better for having read it, that someone has handed me a way to live through life’s eventualities.”
–Laura Kasischke, National Book Critics Circle Award Winner, acclaimed poet and author of Where Now, New and Selected Poems.
“Here in these pages, the steady gaze of the unconditional. Here, jazz, Modigliani, cupcakes, Greenwich Village, and a room in a dementia unit are the swirls inside a hamsa. The hamsa—the hand of a wife and a lifetime of memory. The Present Abandoned is fearless in its exploration of what it means to love: “We may have to go down/our separate paths and not be terrified.”
–Tamra Carraher, editor of Alexandria Quarterly
“In this finely-honed, poetic journey through the heart of love and dementia, Harriet Shenkman shares naked truths with bravery, humor, frustration and graceful acceptance.”
–Ellaraine Lockie, award-winning poet, LILIPOH Poetry Editor