Jane Shore (poet)
Encyclopedia
Life
She graduated from Goddard CollegeGoddard College
Goddard College is a private, liberal arts college located in Plainfield, Vermont, offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Goddard College currently operates on an intensive low-residency model...
, and moved from Vermont to the Iowa Writers' Workshop
Iowa Writers' Workshop
The Program in Creative Writing, more commonly known as the Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, is a highly regarded graduate-level creative writing program in the United States...
. She graduated from Radcliffe College
Radcliffe College
Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was the coordinate college for Harvard University. It was also one of the Seven Sisters colleges. Radcliffe College conferred joint Harvard-Radcliffe diplomas beginning in 1963 and a formal merger agreement with...
in 1972, where she was a student of Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956 and a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970. Elizabeth Bishop House is an artists' retreat in Great Village, Nova Scotia...
.
Shore met Howard Norman
Howard Norman
Howard A. Norman , is an American award-winning writer and educator. Most of his short stories and novels are set in Canada's Maritime Provinces. He has written several translations of Algonquin, Cree, Eskimo, and Inuit folklore. His books have been translated into 12 languages.-Early...
in 1981, and they married in 1984 They have a daughter, Emma (born 1988).
Norman and Shore lived in Cambridge
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, New Jersey, Oahu, and Vermont, before settling in to homes in Chevy Chase, Maryland
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Chevy Chase is the name of both a town and an unincorporated census-designated place in Montgomery County, Maryland. In addition, a number of villages in the same area of Montgomery County include "Chevy Chase" in their names...
near Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
during the school year, and East Calais, Vermont
Calais, Vermont
Calais is a town in Washington County, Vermont, United States. The population was 1,529 at the 2000 census. Calais is pronounced similarly to palace, not chalet...
in the summertime. Their friend, the author David Mamet
David Mamet
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...
and Shore's Goddard College
Goddard College
Goddard College is a private, liberal arts college located in Plainfield, Vermont, offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Goddard College currently operates on an intensive low-residency model...
classmate, lives nearby.
During the summer of 2003, poet Reetika Vazirani
Reetika Vazirani
Reetika Vazirani was an American poet and educator. On July 16, 2003, Vazirani was housesitting in the Chevy Chase, Maryland home of novelist Howard Norman and his wife, the poet, Jane Shore. There, Vazirani took the life of her two-year-old son, Jehan, and then her own.-Life:She was born in...
was housesitting the Norman's Chevy Chase home. There, on July 16, she killed her young son before committing suicide.
Career
She has edited PloughsharesPloughshares
Ploughshares is an American literary magazine founded in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, Ploughshares has been based at Emerson College in the heart of Boston...
, and her poems have been published in numerous magazines, including Poetry, The New Republic, and The Yale Review
She was Radcliffe Institute, fellow in poetry, 1971–73, and Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in English at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, 1973—, and Jenny McKean Moore Writer at George Washington University
George Washington University
The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...
in Washington, D.C. She was visiting distinguished poet at the University of Hawaii
University of Hawaii
The University of Hawaii System, formally the University of Hawaii and popularly known as UH, is a public, co-educational college and university system that confers associate, bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees through three university campuses, seven community college campuses, an employment...
.
She is currently a professor at George Washington University
George Washington University
The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...
.
Awards
- Eye Level, winner of the 1977 Juniper Prize
- The Minute Hand, awarded the 1986 Lamont Poetry Prize
- Music Minus One, a finalist for the 1996 National Book Critic Circle Award
- 1991 Guggenheim Fellowship
- two grants from the N.E.A.
- fellow in poetry at the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute
- Alfred Hodder Fellow at Princeton University
- Goodyear Fellow at the Foxcroft School in Virginia
Works
Reviews
Put another way, there is in the poetry of Jane Shore, a freshness of outlook, even when the dominant instinct is retrospective. The poems seem a vivid refusal of desolation, though there is no reluctance in them, to confront the usual varieties of estrangement and suffering....This is a poet who gives to directness, honesty of emotion and fundamental sanity the good name they deserve.