Super Crone

Deborah Coy's Super Crone is a witty and delightful response to the challenges women over fifty face in our society, along with meditations on the Northern New Mexico landscape and her enduring partnership with husband Jon.
-Poetry Playhouse Publications

In a rare collection that melds wit with poignancy, Deborah Coy's poems lead us through the well-lived and well-loved life of a woman who proclaims, "Shiny with age/I fiddle with the braille of past feasts." But these poems do not belabor what was.
They emerge, sexy and irreverent, tender and familiar, to celebrate adventure and surprise, that is, to eloquently record a common yet extraordinary life. Fierce witness of the present, Coy insists she will "rise in the stirrups and shout, "hallelujah"-We are lucky to join the ride.
-Barbara Rockman, author, "to cleave"


Deborah Coy embraces the spirit of The Crone throughout this book, bringing her indelible wit and wisdom to the page as she looks back on childhood, family, sex, religion, and politics through the eyes of a woman who accepts aging and even the inevitability of death. Her trademark humor is on full display whether she describes herself ("my skin is / one size too large"), her rejection of God ("I thought I had love / but he unfriended me"), or those with Santa fetishes ("They croon 'Santa Baby' / when they see my package."). She can be cantankerous or sweet, erotic or serious-often all at once-like the Super Crone she envisions. Not just a hand-me-down crone of folklore, Coy creates her own folklore here, including in a series of Josephine poems. In contemplating her composted body, she claims "I will be delicious." Indeed, she already is. Taste!
You won't be disappointed.
-Scott Wiggerman, Albuquerque poet, instructor, editor, artist

This is a consummate book of poetry written by an inspired, mature poet. Deb Coy has been writing all her life, and this is the book of a lifetime filled with enchanting and imaginative details of nature and deep insights into sensual and emotional experience. Her language is inventive and often clever in her turns of phrase and observations that surprise the reader. Highly original in the subjects she contemplates, Coy's style is brilliant. Super Crone is a penetrating exploration of the nature of aging and of nature itself in its solitary and overwhelming presence.
-Carol Moscrip is the author of six chapbooks and Straw, poems, a Pushcart Prize nominee.