Robert Cooperman Livres

"Lost on the Blood Dark Sea is not just a modern retelling of Homer's Odyssey. It's a re-imagining of the ten long, murderous years it took Odysseus to return to Ithaca after the end of the Trojan War. Whereas Homer's epic is told solely from the point of view of Odysseus, many voices swell the choir of Lost on the Blood Dark Sea, some, like Elpenor, who were characters in the original, and some who are invented for the purpose of giving Cooperman's collection a whole chorus of characters. But while a classical Greek tragedy's chorus all spoke with one voice, in Cooperman's rendering of The Odyssey characters offer differing, sometimes clashing points of view and commentary on the action, to move the story forward and to offer a panorama of viewpoints. While nothing can rival the majestic poems attributed to Homer, Lost on the Blood Red Sea offers a ripping yarn and vivid characters, all caught in the nets of fate, frailty, and the best, though not always successful, efforts of humans to survive"-- Provided by publisher

"In The Ghosts And Bones Of Troy, we meet an Odysseus who returns home, and this victorious moment doesn’t turn out as he may have liked. This book is a reflection on journey and expectation, how the journey changes us and we may not realize that this is happening. Cooperman not only helps us to re-imagine Homer but to re-imagine our own journeys—and the surprises they bring." -- Provided by publisher

Poetry. Drama. "THE DEVIL WHO RAISED ME is the origin story of one of Robert Cooperman's most enduring creations: the poetry-spouting Wild West badman John Sprockett, who we first met over twenty years ago in Gold Creek, Colorado. Here, in antebellum Missouri, he is tormented by the Jesus-loving hypocrite Reverend Jeremiah Sprockett--truly a devil. But John is nothing if not resourceful. Read these poems and cheer him on!"--Charles Rammelkamp

DRAFT BOARD BLUES is more than the story of a draft dodger. It's about a war and a generation's response to our debacle in Vietnam. As with all wars, old men declared war and then shoved young men into harm's way. And as always, it was mostly the poor and the most desperate who fought the war. The losses were heavy on our side, but for the Vietnamese, they were staggering, unthinkable. Cooperman's narrator at first passively acquiesces to serving and probably dying in that conflagration. But when he gets a brief glimpse that there are other possibilities, he decides he'd rather die than have the army or the Viet Cong kill him. With wit, outrage, irony, and "a touch of the blues," DRAFT BOARD BLUES chronicles that struggle. To read it is to be thrown back into a tumultuous time, a time not so different from our own.