[New-Poetry] Jane Cooper RIP

[David Graham]

These things are always very relative as well as subjective, but Jane  
Cooper's long been on my short list of under-appreciated poets.

Here's an early, rather uncharacteristic piece of hers I've always  
liked.

a poem with capital letters

john berryman asked me to write a poem about roosters.
elizabeth bishop, he said, once wrote a poem about roosters.
do your poems use capital letters? he asked. like god?
i said. god no, he said, like princeton! i said,
god preserve me if i ever write a poem about princeton! and i thought,
o john berryman, what has brought me into this company of poets
where the masculine thing to do is use capital letters
and even princeton's cock-a-hoop with god’s betters?

--Jane Cooper (1924-2007).  Maps & Windows.  Collier Books, 1974.   
[orig. Mercator's World: Poems 1947-1951]



========================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu

Home Page:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/About%20Me.html

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==========================================



On Nov 4, 2007, at 8:09 PM, JforJames at aol.com wrote:

> Jane M. Cooper, Faculty Emerita, Helped Create SLC’s Writing Program
> Wednesday, October 31, 2007
>
> Jane Marvel Cooper, poet, Professor and Poet-in-Residence Emerita  
> at Sarah Lawrence College, died peacefully at Pennswood Village,  
> Newtown, P.A., on October 26th from complications due to  
> Parkinson's Disease.
>
> Jane Cooper joined the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College in 1950,  
> where she remained as a teacher and poet in residence until her  
> retirement in 1987. Together with Grace Paley, Jean Valentine,  
> Muriel Rukeyser and others, Cooper helped develop and enhance the  
> College’s writing program that became one of the most distinguished  
> in the country.  On her retirement after 37 years on the writing/ 
> literature faculty an endowed scholarship in her name was created  
> to support a writing student
>
>
>
> See what's new at AOL.com and Make AOL Your Homepage.
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