Robert Cooperman's poetry lives in two worlds: the Brooklyn of his Jewish upbringing and the fantasy worlds he inhabits in most
of his collections. He's equally at home in the Colorado Territory, the Middle Ages, Ireland during the time of British
oppression, as he is in the shenanigans and devilment he got up to as a boy on Brooklyn's less than mean streets. He is the
winner of the Colorado Book Award for Poetry in 2000, for In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains and the
runner-up for the WILLA Literary Award, sponsored by Women Writing the West, for The Widow's Burden.
Bob's latest book is now available!
A Dream of the Northwest Passage
In a return to the dramatic monologue form, Cooperman spins a tale of the explorer Henry Hudson’s fourth, and final, futile voyage to try to find a sea passage to spice rich Asia. Hudson’s starving crew spent a winter in unspeakably harsh Arctic conditions and upon the brink of starvation, mutinied. Hudson, his son, and a few ailing and loyal crew members were set adrift in the ship’s boat in what is now Hudson Bay. There, they vanished from history, but what if they made landfall? That’s the premise that drives this collection. But survival turns out to be even worse than a relatively quick death from exposure to the brutal Arctic elements. One by one Hudson’s men succumb to freezing weather, despair, sickness, and hunger. If the physical conditions aren’t bad enough, an Inuit outcast is dumped on the island as well. But in him, Hudson sees salvation and a way to finally find the Northwest Passage, as the two set off in a kayak of their making for one last voyage, either into the pages of explorer immortality or into the vast white out death of eternity.
In a return to the dramatic monologue form, Cooperman spins a tale of the explorer Henry Hudson’s fourth, and final, futile voyage to try to find a sea passage to spice rich Asia. Hudson’s starving crew spent a winter in unspeakably harsh Arctic conditions and upon the brink of starvation, mutinied. Hudson, his son, and a few ailing and loyal crew members were set adrift in the ship’s boat in what is now Hudson Bay. There, they vanished from history, but what if they made landfall? That’s the premise that drives this collection. But survival turns out to be even worse than a relatively quick death from exposure to the brutal Arctic elements. One by one Hudson’s men succumb to freezing weather, despair, sickness, and hunger. If the physical conditions aren’t bad enough, an Inuit outcast is dumped on the island as well. But in him, Hudson sees salvation and a way to finally find the Northwest Passage, as the two set off in a kayak of their making for one last voyage, either into the pages of explorer immortality or into the vast white out death of eternity.