Marsha Truman Cooper
Filed under: Authors
In 1987, I won first prize in the New Letters Writing Contests for poetry. I also won the Bernice Slote Poetry Award from Prairie Schooner in the early nineties. Pudding House Publications reissued Substantial Holdings, a chapbook of mine that won their competition in 1986. The 2002 edition has been expanded with new poems. My work has appeared in numerous small magazines including Poetry Northwest, Tar River Poetry, The Minnesota Review, Negative Capability, Blueline, River Styx and Puerto del Sol.
I'd like you to know about the Underwood typewriter in my photograph. It's a lucky machine. In the late '40s or early '50s, my father bought it from the manager of L.M Morris Company in Modesto, California. This man was George Lucas, Sr. He slaved and saved and bought the business, which is still a going concern. His son became the well-known film producer. Meanwhile, my father's independent insurance agency flourished. Eventually, he needed five more typewriters, all Royals. He kept the Underwood himself for good fortune. I received it for writing papers when I left home for college at the University of California at Davis, where I graduated with honors from the English department. I married my husband, Dennis, and from a one-bedroom apartment in New Jersey began sending out poems and using up a lot of inked ribbon in the process. I now compose on a computer keyboard, but even the father of Star Wars himself would balk at the price for my Underwood.
Photo by Clayton Fogel
Winning Entry: You Had to Be There
Contest Won: War Poetry Contest 2004, Third Prize
