Cooper, Jane 1924-2007 (Jane Marvel Cooper)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born October 9, 1924, in Atlantic City, NJ; died of complications from Parkinson's disease, October 26, 2007, in Newtown, PA. Educator and poet. Cooper was not a prolific poet and, when she wrote, she generally confined her musings to the theme she knew best: the challenge of succeeding as a female writer in what she saw as a male-dominated field. She wrote of women, but less of women's issues than of women artists. Her poems celebrated the art of other women, such as writer Willa Cather and painter Georgia O'Keeffe. When she focused on her own life, Cooper wrote of such things as her childhood in Jacksonville, Florida, or later, her thoughts on growing old. Her poetry was praised for her attention to form and detail and her careful use of language. For nearly forty years Cooper taught English at Sarah Lawrence College in New York state, retiring in 1987. She was named New York State Poet in 1996. Cooper's poetry collections include The Weather of Six Mornings, which was the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets in 1968; Maps and Windows (1974); Scaffolding: New and Selected Poems (1984), which earned the author a Maurice English Poetry Award for poets over the age of fifty; Green Notebook, Winter Road (1994); and The Flashboat: Poems Collected and Reclaimed (1999).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Poets, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, November 14, 2007, p. B9.

New York Times, November 9, 2007, p. A25.