Robert Cooperman confesses that Macbeth, not Hamlet, is his favorite play by Shakespeare. In fact, The Death and Rebirth of Ophelia is his revenge on the play for having been forced to read it on all-too numerous occasions in high school, college, and graduate school, and has come to thoroughly detest the title character. So, one fine day the thought hit him over the head: What if Ophelia traded places with a woman who bore her an uncanny resemblance in the visiting acting troupe and left Elsinore with that troupe, to become a strolling player? Such is the premise of Cooperman’s latest poetry collection.
In the past, he’s written about the Trojan War and its aftermath—The Ghosts and Bones of Troy (Kelsay Books, 2020), Lost on the Blood Dark Sea (FutureCycle Press, 2020), and Troy (March Street Press, 2011)—especially from the point of view of his first literary hero, Odysseus.
Other collections have followed Cooperman’s hyper-violent Old West alter ego, John Sprockett, “that saint of sacred mayhem,” who will never allow a lady to be scorned or anyone to stare rudely at his ruined face, as in In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains (Western Reflections Pub Co., 1999), The Widow’s Burden (Western Reflections Pub Co., 2001), and A Nightmare on Horseback (Kelsay Books, 2022).
Most recently, in Steerage (Kelsay Books, 2024), he created a highly fictionalized account of his maternal grandfather’s youthful travails on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early 20th century. Draft Board Blues (FutureCycle Press, 2017), another recent collection, narrated Cooperman’s battle to keep from being killed in Vietnam. Their Wars (Kelsay Books, 2018) tells of his parents’ experiences at then Fort Bragg during the last days of World War II.
Cooperman grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and completed a PhD in Creative Writing and 19th-century British Literature at the University of Denver. He has taught at the University of Georgia, Bowling Green State University, and the University of Baltimore.
He lives in Denver with his wife Beth.
Paperback: 108 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (February 19, 2025)
Review:
London Grip Poetry Review