Customer Reviews

Music Minus One: Poems

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I grew up down the street from Jane Shore and went to school with her, however, after reading her poems I realize that I never really knew her. "Music Minus One" opened up a flood of nostalgic memories for me of Jane, her parents, Bergenline Ave., the plane that crashed into the apartment house a block from where I grew up, and being Jewish in the 1950's. I knew Jane was talented but I didn't appreciate just how talented. I felt as if I was being reacquainted with an old friend who was now sharing her deepest thoughts with me. I haven't seen Jane in over 30 years but I feel like I just spent an afternoon with her. Her talent has reunited me with my past.

I had the pleasure of having dinner with Jane at the home of one my favorite professors. She had already published "Music Minus One" and she was in the process of writing "Happy Family." Not only are the poems in this collection beautiful, but the language she employs is a tribute to her artistry. She creates glorious imagery through sounds and reduces the pain of adolescence to a poignant and memborable symbol. Although I'm sure Jane has long forgotten the twelve students who huddled around her on a cold December night, none of us have forgotten her down-to-earth advice for new authors or her unforgettable presentation of her poetry.

A newspaper review quoted on this website says, regarding Jane Shore's "Music Minus One", that "at times, the 'prosy' nature of her stories leads the reader to wonder why she's arranged her work into verses --- prose poems might have been more suitable".

I couldn't agree more. I was drawn to the book by an interesting premise --- a memoir in poetry about the writer's experiences of childhood in the '50s and motherhood, complete with elegies to parents, etc. This idea was extremely appealing to me. But I soon saw the flaws mentioned in the review I've just mentioned --- while Shore's vignettes are compelling, and sometimes moving, there is an irritating 'prosiness' about her poems --- the sense that she just took prose fragments and broke them into stanzas.

Here are some examples of what I mean:

"My family admired the Dutch people; / they'd hidden Jews in their houses during the War. / Once, while I was playing with my tea set, / I heard my aunt Roz say the exact thing: / 'The Dutch hid Jews during the War'" ("Washing the Streets of Holland").

"That was the summer I had a job, baby-sitting / for a couple who'd had a baby late, at forty-two" ("Days of Awe").

"I loved to shop at the Five-and-Ten, / the Woolworth's on Bergenline, / a block away from my parents' store" ("The Five-and-Ten").

Poetry, for me, has to have that special extra thing, magic. The unusual or beautiful arrangement of words, the arresting image. That's what makes it different from prose --- and not just the fact that it's arranged into verses. And, while Jane Shore occasionally strikes that perfect note, there's not enough of that magic in this book, and too much of the type of sentence I have quoted above. So, for me at least, the collection was ultimately unsatisfying.

Two and a half stars.

I had the opportunity to meet Jane Shore when she was a guest speaker in my English 101 class in 1996 at the University of San Francisco. She began by asking if anyone was from New Jersey - and I immediately knew I liked her. She was engaging and kind, and when she began reading from her book, Music Minus One, I wanted to take it from her hands and read it in one sitting. I purchased two of her books - one for me and one for my mother. What I didn't expect was that my mom read the poems, and then annotated each one with her own memories of growing up in New Jersey. She did the same with Happy Family, and I am thrilled at the prospect of adding another to my collection - which has become my most prized possession. Jane Shore takes you there - even if you never been, and for me, introduced a world inhabited by my mother - one I may have otherwise not shared with her.