Jane Cooper
Encyclopedia
Life and career
Cooper was born in Atlantic City, New JerseyAtlantic City, New Jersey
Atlantic City is a city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States, and a nationally renowned resort city for gambling, shopping and fine dining. The city also served as the inspiration for the American version of the board game Monopoly. Atlantic City is located on Absecon Island on the coast...
, spent her early childhood in Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...
, and then moved with her family to Princeton in the mid-1930s. She attended Vassar College
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
from 1942 to 1944, and earned a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in 1946. In 1953–54 Cooper took a year off to get an M.A. at the University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
, where she studied with Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...
, and John Berryman
John Berryman
John Allyn Berryman was an American poet and scholar, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and was considered a key figure in the Confessional school of poetry...
in 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...
.
Cooper joined the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College is a private liberal arts college in the United States, and a leader in progressive education since its founding in 1926. Located just 30 minutes north of Midtown Manhattan in southern Westchester County, New York, in the city of Yonkers, this coeducational college offers...
, in 1950, and remained as a teacher and poet in residence until her retirement in 1987. She held the post of New York State Poet from 1995 to 1997. She died on October 26, 2007, of complications due to Parkinson's Disease.
Awards
- Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
- Maurice English Poetry Award (1985)
- Shelley Memorial AwardShelley Memorial AwardThe Shelley Memorial Award of more than $3,500, given out by the Poetry Society of America, was established by the will of the late Mary P. Sears, and named after the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The prize is given to a living American poet selected with reference to genius and need. The selection is...
(1977) - Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College - Fellowship
- Guggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
- (1960) - Ingram Merrill Award
- National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the ArtsThe National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
- Fellowship - Lamont Poetry Prize (1968) for The Weather of Six Mornings
Works
Books
- The Weather of Six Mornings (1969), which was the Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets.
- Maps and Windows (1974)
- Scaffolding: Selected Poems (1993)
- Green Notebook, Winter Road (1994), which was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
- Flashboat: Poems Collected and Reclaimed (W. W. Norton & Company, 1999)
Edited
- Extended Outlooks: The Iowa Review Collection of Contemporary Women Writers (1982)
- The Sanity of Earth and Grass: Complete Poems of Robert Winner (1994)
Memories
- Memories of Jane Cooper, Denise Duhamel, American Poetry Review, May 12, 2008
- Memories of Jane Cooper part 2, Denise Duhamel, American Poetry Review, May 14, 2008
Reviews
Scaffolding, Grace Paley:This is a beautiful and stubborn book of poems. The poems say only what they mean. They have about them a great deep patience for the whole truth, a waiting in quietness for tremor and explosion.
The Flashboat, The New Yorker:
Cooper handles with equal assurance public statement and private reflection
Mark Doty:
To perform the alchemical work of translating a human presence into paper and ink: that is the deam of the book, a dream fulfilled her[e], in this beautifully assembled life's work. Jane Cooper has been engaged in a long patient act of making a consideration of self-in-the-world vigorous, humble, and fierce all at once.