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Surge
Articulating the search for a cohesive American identity, Matthew Cooperman’s poetry attends to the slippery question of its history in personal and cultural memory and its tenuous constitution as family, nature, love, and community. Cooperman uses the metaphor of travel to invoke the necessary motion and distance required to look back at one’s past.
- GenresPoetry
Paperback
First published April 1, 1999
2 people want to read
About the author
Matthew Cooperman
24 books32 followersMatthew Cooperman is the author of, most recently, NOS (disorder, not otherwise specified), w/Aby Kaupang (Futurepoem, 2018) as well as Spool, winner of the New Measure Prize (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2016), the text + image collaboration Imago for the Fallen World, w/Marius Lehene (Jaded Ibis Press, 2013), Still: of the Earth as the Ark which Does Not Move (Counterpath Press, 2011), DaZE (Salt Publishing Ltd, 2006) and A Sacrificial Zinc (Pleiades/LSU, 2001), winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize. Five chapbooks exist in addition, including Little Spool, winner of the 2014 Pavement Saw Chapbook Prize, and Disorder 299.00 (Essay Press).
A former Fine Arts Work Center fellow in Provincetown, Cooperman was a founding editor of Quarter After Eight. He is currently a poetry editor at Colorado Review and teaches at Colorado State University. He lives in Fort Collins, CO with his wife, the poet Aby Kaupang, and their two children.
A former Fine Arts Work Center fellow in Provincetown, Cooperman was a founding editor of Quarter After Eight. He is currently a poetry editor at Colorado Review and teaches at Colorado State University. He lives in Fort Collins, CO with his wife, the poet Aby Kaupang, and their two children.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 18, 2008
Matthew Cooperman, Surge (Kent State University Press, 1999)
For some reason, I've always held this up in my head beside Richard Siken's Crush, one of the best books I read last year. I'm not sure why I often confuse the two, but I'm relatively sure that won't happen again. Cooperman's poetry is of an entirely different beast than Siken's, which makes me happy because I'm now able to tell the two apart in my head. While, where craft is concerned, Cooperman is every bit as good a writer as Siken, he seems a little more detached from his subject matter:
"Husks I found
in my grandfather's pockets,
coral lips, one in each sleeve
the man split
between seed and death's
dried leaf. He knew
the terrain of flagging trees,
orchards strung in rain
after, lands a gash
return in heather...."
("Them Apples")
It's good stuff, and no doubt about it, but it lacks that visceral punch one gets with Siken. I don't necessarily mean that as a criticism, as Siken, for all his strengths, is a poet best read a bit at a time so as not to be overwhelmed, while a Cooperman collection requests (not demands, mind you) to be read in one sitting, flowing over the reader with far less force than its title would suggest; more a drizzle than a thunderstorm. In any case, it's quite good, and if you can find it, I do recommend checking it out; Cooperman is a guy you should watch. ***
For some reason, I've always held this up in my head beside Richard Siken's Crush, one of the best books I read last year. I'm not sure why I often confuse the two, but I'm relatively sure that won't happen again. Cooperman's poetry is of an entirely different beast than Siken's, which makes me happy because I'm now able to tell the two apart in my head. While, where craft is concerned, Cooperman is every bit as good a writer as Siken, he seems a little more detached from his subject matter:
"Husks I found
in my grandfather's pockets,
coral lips, one in each sleeve
the man split
between seed and death's
dried leaf. He knew
the terrain of flagging trees,
orchards strung in rain
after, lands a gash
return in heather...."
("Them Apples")
It's good stuff, and no doubt about it, but it lacks that visceral punch one gets with Siken. I don't necessarily mean that as a criticism, as Siken, for all his strengths, is a poet best read a bit at a time so as not to be overwhelmed, while a Cooperman collection requests (not demands, mind you) to be read in one sitting, flowing over the reader with far less force than its title would suggest; more a drizzle than a thunderstorm. In any case, it's quite good, and if you can find it, I do recommend checking it out; Cooperman is a guy you should watch. ***
Displaying 1 of 1 review