An Oar for Odysseus is Robert Cooperman’s swansong to his multi-volume homage to Homer’s The Odyssey, the first literary love of his life, going back to his junior high school’s library, where he found a prose translation and fell instantly in love with the larger-than-life rapscallion and his breathtaking and heart-stopping adventures.
Along with his love for Homer, even if the bard was merely a scribe writing down what had been a long and glorious oral tradition, Cooperman has had a lifelong love affair with the Grateful Dead, about whom he’s written extensively, including a mini-Canterbury Tales version of the medieval folktale from which the band took their name.
Cooperman has published more than 20 volumes of poetry, most recently, Steerage and The Death and Rebirth of Ophelia, both from Kelsay Books. In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains won the Colorado Book Award for Poetry, and Draft Board Blues (FutureCycle Books) was named one of the Ten Best Books by a Colorado Author by Westword Magazine in 2017.
Paperback: 132 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (December 17, 2025)