Reviews and Comments
The Words We Used
"The Words We Used is my favorite, so far, among Bob Cooperman's many fine books. He has served us a broth of rich language, warm, earthy grit, and colorful characters who hold onto a Yiddish past while blasting their way into a New World. His words touch the reader's tongue with sharp flavors all mixed in with rich globs of warmth and bittersweet love. The result is a bowl of steaming chicken soup carried to us when the only cure is something real and deeply human. These poems are just what is needed."
- Carol Hamilton
"The Words We Used is Robert Cooperman's charming exploration of the Yiddish language and cultures as encountered by a young boy in mid-century New York who grows up to be a poet in Colorado. While considering various words, from "Alter Kockers" to "Zaftig" by way of "Nosh" and "Oy," Cooperman introduces his readers to the family, friends and childhood experiences that shaped his sensibility. Essentially a book of memory, The Words We Used recreates a scattering community linked by a colorful, dying language, and shows a poet alive to the pleasures of words."
-Floyd Skloot
A Dream of the Northwest Passage
"In A Dream of the Northwest Passage, Bob Cooperman does what only he is capable of doing- creating an exciting narrative adventure out of a series of linked free-verse poems with all the music and yearning of lines in a Shakespearian play. Cooperman is a master of the verse novel, perhaps our only contemporary master of this form."
-Michael Salcman
"To those who diss contemporary narrative poetry: Abandon your prejudice, all ye who enter A Dream of the Northwest Passage.." The 56 poems hang from a well known story: the ill-fated last voyage of explorer Henry Hudson and his son, John. In Cooperman's telling, John is rescued by Auliqaq- an Inuit exiled for the murder of his wife and her lover- and a native community that takes him in. But the flesh of the story is the richly imagined voices of John, Auliqaq, and Henry. The marooned crew, "grumbling buggers" all, "whinging" in their misery as they fight for survival aboard a "shallop"; Auliqaq makes the "spilled Berry Moon" and the "Egg Moon" seem as immediate as the white "ice giants," with "their dreadfull teeth." Cooperman's characters become powerfully believable. His characters' voices move sturdily in three-to-five stress lines, sturdy yet fluid, tough yet dignified, and its imagery bespeaks a powerful poetic imagination capable of lighting up a dimmed past. This vibrant tale of desperation and degeneration, revenge and redemption, will thrill history lovers, story-lovers, poetry-lovers."
-Clarinda Harriss
Faculty Adviser, Grub Street ,
Editor/Director, Brickhouse Books, Inc.
A Tiny Ship Upon the Sea
"When I sit down with a new manuscript by Bob Cooperman, I know I'm going to sit down
for the count and won't stir again until his story is told. A Tiny Ship upon the Sea, rich with legend, lore, and history of Ireland, is a tale of suspense and surprise about the wicked and the wicked-er! The characters are thieves, villains, hypocrites, yet in Cooperman's skillful hands, I come to care about them. Underlying all the apt metaphors, images and other wonderful tricks of the poetic trade lies Cooperman's always present quest for justice. I can say of this book, as I can rarely say of a volumen of poetry, "It is a page-turner!"
-Carol Hamilton
former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma
and author of Vanishing Point and Shots On
A Tiny Ship Upon the Sea is more than a spirited historical adventure tale. It is an extended meditation on friendship, sexual awakening, political oppression, and the fundamental desire for liberty- all enlivened by the richness of Irish myth and fable. Robert Cooperman is unique among American poets in his mastery of the narrative poetic sequence, and that mastery is evident on every page of this fine collection."
- Joseph Hutchison,
author of The Rain at Midnight, Bed of Coals, and ten other books of poety.
In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains
"These are driving, sensuous poems, not at all talky or merely historical or cerebral: they give the feel of a region we could locate on a map, a rich Spoon River Anthology of the mountain West, told with all the splendid aspects of the craft."
- Walt McDonald, Director of Creative Writing
English Department, Texas Tech University
Jennifer MacPherson, The Comstock Review
The Words We Used
"The Words We Used is my favorite, so far, among Bob Cooperman's many fine books. He has served us a broth of rich language, warm, earthy grit, and colorful characters who hold onto a Yiddish past while blasting their way into a New World. His words touch the reader's tongue with sharp flavors all mixed in with rich globs of warmth and bittersweet love. The result is a bowl of steaming chicken soup carried to us when the only cure is something real and deeply human. These poems are just what is needed."
- Carol Hamilton
"The Words We Used is Robert Cooperman's charming exploration of the Yiddish language and cultures as encountered by a young boy in mid-century New York who grows up to be a poet in Colorado. While considering various words, from "Alter Kockers" to "Zaftig" by way of "Nosh" and "Oy," Cooperman introduces his readers to the family, friends and childhood experiences that shaped his sensibility. Essentially a book of memory, The Words We Used recreates a scattering community linked by a colorful, dying language, and shows a poet alive to the pleasures of words."
-Floyd Skloot
A Dream of the Northwest Passage
"In A Dream of the Northwest Passage, Bob Cooperman does what only he is capable of doing- creating an exciting narrative adventure out of a series of linked free-verse poems with all the music and yearning of lines in a Shakespearian play. Cooperman is a master of the verse novel, perhaps our only contemporary master of this form."
-Michael Salcman
"To those who diss contemporary narrative poetry: Abandon your prejudice, all ye who enter A Dream of the Northwest Passage.." The 56 poems hang from a well known story: the ill-fated last voyage of explorer Henry Hudson and his son, John. In Cooperman's telling, John is rescued by Auliqaq- an Inuit exiled for the murder of his wife and her lover- and a native community that takes him in. But the flesh of the story is the richly imagined voices of John, Auliqaq, and Henry. The marooned crew, "grumbling buggers" all, "whinging" in their misery as they fight for survival aboard a "shallop"; Auliqaq makes the "spilled Berry Moon" and the "Egg Moon" seem as immediate as the white "ice giants," with "their dreadfull teeth." Cooperman's characters become powerfully believable. His characters' voices move sturdily in three-to-five stress lines, sturdy yet fluid, tough yet dignified, and its imagery bespeaks a powerful poetic imagination capable of lighting up a dimmed past. This vibrant tale of desperation and degeneration, revenge and redemption, will thrill history lovers, story-lovers, poetry-lovers."
-Clarinda Harriss
Faculty Adviser, Grub Street ,
Editor/Director, Brickhouse Books, Inc.
A Tiny Ship Upon the Sea
"When I sit down with a new manuscript by Bob Cooperman, I know I'm going to sit down
for the count and won't stir again until his story is told. A Tiny Ship upon the Sea, rich with legend, lore, and history of Ireland, is a tale of suspense and surprise about the wicked and the wicked-er! The characters are thieves, villains, hypocrites, yet in Cooperman's skillful hands, I come to care about them. Underlying all the apt metaphors, images and other wonderful tricks of the poetic trade lies Cooperman's always present quest for justice. I can say of this book, as I can rarely say of a volumen of poetry, "It is a page-turner!"
-Carol Hamilton
former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma
and author of Vanishing Point and Shots On
A Tiny Ship Upon the Sea is more than a spirited historical adventure tale. It is an extended meditation on friendship, sexual awakening, political oppression, and the fundamental desire for liberty- all enlivened by the richness of Irish myth and fable. Robert Cooperman is unique among American poets in his mastery of the narrative poetic sequence, and that mastery is evident on every page of this fine collection."
- Joseph Hutchison,
author of The Rain at Midnight, Bed of Coals, and ten other books of poety.
In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains
"These are driving, sensuous poems, not at all talky or merely historical or cerebral: they give the feel of a region we could locate on a map, a rich Spoon River Anthology of the mountain West, told with all the splendid aspects of the craft."
- Walt McDonald, Director of Creative Writing
English Department, Texas Tech University
Jennifer MacPherson, The Comstock Review