Joyce Greenberg Lott
Personal Information
Description
Joyce Lott grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey. She attended Wellesley College for one year, then left to marry and have children. When all her children were school age, she moved with her family to Princeton, New Jersey, where she attended Douglass College. After graduating, she went on to receive a Masters from Rutgers University. She divorced and began teaching, then wrote her first book, A Teacher’s Stories: Reflections on High School Writers about her experiences. She joined the poets' collective Cool Women and began to publish essays and poetry. She remarried, and after twenty years, her husband died. She published her first book of poetry, Dear Mrs. Dalloway, a short time later. She is currently retired from teaching and continues to write and publish poetry.
Books
A Teacher's Stories
A Teacher's Stories is an outgrowth of Joyce Lott's journal, in which she scrutinized challenging classroom problems—cultural clashes, disparity in skill levels, gender issues, and fluctuations in growth rate — problems that inhibited student productivity. Replaying critical classroom incidents, the author invites teachers to ask the questions: "How well did I handle this situation?" "What happened, and why did it happen?" "How could I have improved my performance or my students' performance?" "What can I learn from this experience that will enter into my decision-making in the future" Readers will begin to question sacrosanct methods. They will learn more about the importance of journal writing, the pros and cons of cooperative grouping, integrating portfolios effectively, establishing a classroom environment where students and teachers have time to reflect, play with language, make many starts, and accomplish work that matters to them. Those thinking about becoming teachers and those already studying to become teachers will read about Joyce's dilemmas, analyze her solutions, and perhaps, transform their work Longtime teachers looking for a role model will read about Joyce's willingness to risk a different approach and insist themselves upon the right, the courage to begin again.
Cool Women Collect Themselves
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.
An Unexpected World
Joyce Greenberg Lott writes poignantly about her husband’s death and the time following, describing the process of living through grief and emerging into "another autumn." In "What It Would Take To Make Your Husband Happy," Lott displays her wry wit: "To cheer you up,/he turns on a ballgame/in the TV room he planned to finish last year./ You sit on a ladder; your feet on a paint can...You know/ The names of all the players and cheer on your team/ which happens to be his." And in "That Room," a spare, elegant poem of regret, she writes, "I wish/ I’d loved you/ in that room/ instead of thinking I didn’t." These are clear, accessible poems that address the experience of love, loss, and "The Unexpected World" that is always presenting itself to us.
Cool Women, Volume Three
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.
Cool Women, Volume Two
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.