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.