The Minute Hand (Winner Lamont Poetry, 1986) - Softcover

JANE SHORE is the author of five books of poetry, including her most recent, A Yes or No Answer, and Music Minus One, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has won the Juniper Prize and the Lamont Poetry Prize. She teaches at George Washington University.

Shore's long-awaited second collection, the 1986 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets, travels the Wordsworthian path of personal memory as the poet evokes "The child . . . who fits inside her still;/ who has yet to discover that self,/ always hidden, who grows and shrinks,/ who multiplies and divides." Simple objectsclocks, weather vanes, empty dresses, dollsassume the unreal dimension found in fairy tales and legend, which themselves provide raw material for Shore's skill at rendering details with Flemish precision. Nevertheless, these graceful poems stay well within the realm of the conceivable, and for all their artistry rarely deviate from the now familiar mean of quiet introspection cast in mythic shades. Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.