Stars at Noon: Poems from the Life of Jacqueline Cochran

by Enid Shomer

These poems give voice to the life of the first woman to fly faster than the speed of sound. While Jacqueline Cochran was alive, no man or woman in the world could match her records for speed, distance, and altitude flying. Founder and director of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) during World War II, Cochran continued to fly competitively until she was sixty, owned and operated her own line of designer cosmetics for three decades, ran for Congress, and generally placed herself on the path of history. Having begun life as a foundling in the crushing poverty of a lumber company town of the Florida panhandle, she described her life as “a passage from sawdust to stardust.” Yet after her death she has barely been remembered.

Poet Enid Shomer brings back this mercurial, dazzling, powerful woman. These poems speak in her voice and in the voices of her mother, teachers, husband, confidants, and political opponents, shaped by Shomer’s consummate formal control and stunning lyricism.

110 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Enid Shomer is an award-winning American poet and fiction writer. She is author of six poetry collections and two short story collections largely set in, influenced by, and life in the State of Florida.

Reviews

[Krista the Krazy Kataloguer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a Jackie Cochrane fan, so of course I had to read this.