Robert Cooperman grew up on the less-than-mean streets of Brooklyn, New York, except for the periodic depredations by neighborhood bully, Tomy Lockhart and his band of merry thugs. Aside from that, it was all idyllic: street football, stickball, basketball at the local schoolyard, pizza at Di Fara’s or trips down to Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs, sitting out on the front yard stoop on a summer evening. Things weren’t nearly as Edenic for Cooperman’s grandfather, who was born in Russia, escaped the tsar’s pogroms with his family to the Whitechapel Section of London (“renowned” for Jack the Ripper), and then while still a child, moved again to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, at the time a slum that made Kolkata look like the mansions on Park Avenue. But he was a tough guy suited to a tough age and thrived. Steerage is a fictionalization of his early life, but one I think he would’ve smiled over to have read.
Cooperman received a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and 19th Century British Literature from the University of Denver. Since then he has published more than 20 collections of poetry, most recently, Hell at Cock’s Crow (Kelsay Books, 2023). In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains (Western Reflections Books, 1999) won the Colorado Award for Poetry. Draft Board Blues (FutureCycle Books, 2017) was named One of the Ten Best Books by a Colorado Author for 2017 by Westword Magazine. My Shtetl won the Holland Prize from Logan Street Press.
He lives in Denver with his wife Beth.
Paperback: 104 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (August 27, 2024)
Review:
Compulsive Reader