Betty Bonham Lies

Cool Women is a critique group of eight women who have been performing their poems together for seven years. At estrogen-drenched poetry readings in venues from New Jersey and Pennsylvania to Oregon and in three volumes of poems, they have explored the arc of women's lives with depth and humor. Cool Women Collect Themselves presents four rounds of poems with each poet in reply and dialogue with the readers before her. Although each poet has a strong individual voice, Cool Women think of themselves a group in which the communal enriches the personal. The Cool Women lead intense and involved lives. Besides teaching and writing more than 200 years, they have worked as caterers, telemarketers, food stylists, artists' models, and a night bell girl; they have raised families and toiled in advertising, medicine, recruiting and insurance. They have received nine New Jersey State Council on the Arts grants, two Allen Ginsberg awards and one William Carlos Williams Prize. They have been nominated for six Pushcart Prizes and for the National Book Critics award. They have published 26 books, not including the three Cool Women volumes. They have been married 13 times and have 16 children and 16 grandchildren. Above all, they are artists of the written and spoken word.

Anthology of edgy poetry by Eloise Bruce, Carolyn Foote Edelmann, Lois Marie Harrod, Betty Lies, Joyce Greenberg Lott, Judy Michaels, Penelope Scambly Schott. "The Cool Women revel in the sensual interplay between the distinct forms a poem can take and the emotional urgency that makes poetry such a compelling art. The joy of this book is that very different hands create poems that are notable for their passionate intelligence. The variety of the poems is a pleasure; so is their integrity," says Baron Wormser. The volume is divided into "Cool Women Talk Woman Talk," " Cool Women in the Landscape" and "Cool Women Sing the Body Electric." In each section the poets explore in 7 very different voices life and death and all that is between.

A collection of ripely redolent, often amusing and always well-crafted poetry by 7 New Jersey women poets: Eloise Bruce, Carolyn Edelmann, Lois Harrod, Betty Lies, Joyce Lott, Judy Michaels and Penelope Schott. This volume of accessible poems is divided into three parts: Hot Poems by Cool Women, Cool Women Celebrate Women, and Cool Women Give Thanks. The poets each provide a unique take on life from a female perspective.