Spool

by Matthew Cooperman

By turns skeptical and ecstatic, musical and sprung, Spool is a formally adventuresome love poem to marriage, language, parenting and illness in the early 21st century.

119 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 1, 2016

About the author

Matthew 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.

Reviews

[Brianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to say I didn’t enjoy this very much. I didn’t like the 3 word lines because it made reading it very choppy and I couldn’t find a good rhythm. This in turn distracted me from making meaning. Honestly, I think most of it went straight over my head. It felt like a near meaningless stream of consciousness half of the time, although I recognize there was a lot of thought in sounds and word play. It certainly references lots of other works and has fun exploring the kinds of conversations you can have though the poetry. Most of that was lost on me though. There were, however, a good collection of wonderful lines, which is what bumped my score up to 3 stars. I think you have to be really immersed in the world of poetry and literature for this to be a fun read, and as much time as I spend reading, I don’t think I fit into that requirement.