Authors Jane Shore and her husband Howard Norman will be holding public reading of their works this afternoon at 4 p.m. in Sanborn Library.
Jane Shore will be reading from her latest book, "Music Minus One," the first poetry collection to be published by Picador, USA. It has been selected as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Awards.
The poems in "Music Minus One" sweep through the author's life from girlhood, to adolescence, to marriage and motherhood. Shore originally intended to present a collection of separate poems, but instead she will read this work which has come to be interpreted as an autobiography in verse.
She uses her childhood as a backdrop for the first poem of the book, "Washing the Streets of Holland." Shore writes: "When I was twelve, I read 'The Diary of Anne Frank.' I identified with her having to live above a busy street ... having to keep quiet for hours at a time."
In these poems, Shore emphasizes how reflecting on one's experience is a fuel for poetry, saying that "memoirs feed poetry the way people shape experience."
The people shaping the experiences described in "Music Minus One" are very real. Shore's family is at the very heart of the book Her father who gives up his promising musical talent to be a better "family man," her mother who faces the reality of cancer and, eventually, death.
The title, "Music Minus One," refers to a kind of record album that provides background music for a person to sing or play solo with at home. Yet such a title also metaphorically describes the symphany of her family's intertwining lives, made up of periods of emotional solitude but also an underlying accompaniment that endures.
The title also indicates the author's broad musical experience, including playing the piano and guitar, and performing in ballet and other dance. The language of her poetry strives to be musical and reflects Shore's love for music and the integral role it has played in her life.
The work also reflects Shore's dedication. Believing she should work to perfection, she resolves "to make every poem as good as the best poem, every line as good as the best line."
This same conscientious effort to achieve perfection has produced two other successful pieces of writing "Eye Level," winner of the Juniper Prize, and "The Minute Hand," winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize.
The Boston Review says of Shore: "Her voice is clear, unpretentious, and caring ... She is a poet who probes our central human emotions and experiences with an integrity and an ingenuity that surprise and delight."
Howard Norman will read a selection from his novel in progress, "The Museum Guard," which is expected to be released next year.
The novel is a story of unrequited love with the distant background of World War II. Howard is also the author of "The Northern Lights" and "The Bird Artist," which was a finalist for the National Book Award and has been translated into 16 different languages.
