Music Minus One

by Jane Shore

The title of this collection refers to a record album that provides orchestral accompaniment for a person who plays a solo instrument at home. Constructed along the lines of a novel comprised of interwoven narratives, Music Minus One begins in 1950s New Jersey, with Jewish-owned shops along a city avenue, the tensions of the Cold War, and Jane Shore's childhood home above her parents' clothing store. Jane Shore's father, George, who played clarinet and saxophone with the Big Bands of the thirties and forties, figures prominently in this book, along with more intimate music from behind closed doors. The author transfigures the emotional dimensions of her childhood into the experience of her own motherhood, life in Vermont, and a memorable elegy for her mother, Essie. . These poems are striking for their jazzy melancholy, structural ambition, and their creation of an autobiography in verse.