About this collectionA Killing Fever is Robert Cooperman’s imaginative retelling of a murder that took place in Wyoming in the 1970s. Instead of delving into the facts of that 20th century case, he reshapes the events and plops them down into the middle of Colorado’s Gold Rush days, a recurring motif in Cooperman’s extensive body of work. In this books, two daughters of the town minister are raped and left for dead, and the whole town becomes frenzied in a lust for revenge.
About the author
Robert Cooperman has taught English at the University of Georgia and Bowling Green State University. He lives in Denver with his wife Beth. His volume In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains won the Colorado Book Award in 2000.
Blurbs
“This is a poet with an exact eye for the historical detail, an exact ear for the nuance of voice. Together these skills create a work that admirably achieves the double goal of historical literature: to bring alive a distant past, and make it resonate among the issues of our own time.” —WILLIAM WENTHE, author of Not Till We Are Lost
“The West was born in blood, and Robert Coopermanʼs fine new book begins abruptly with rape and murder. Following this event come more crimes and injustices, detailed in voices from every corner of society: sheriff, madam, dime novelist, preacher, prospector, Indian scout and killers of every stripe. Cooperman mines a rich vein of vernacular speech, ultimately producing a story with the breadth and vitality of a novel. He proves again that verse remains a powerful medium for the tale.” —DAVID MASON, author of Arrivals and Ludlow
“In these poems the smack of foolʼs gold mingles with the tang of lust and the savor of revenge. Coopermanʼs profiles are the stuff of dime novels: tales of frontier justice and misdirected redress, Rocky Mountain style, that echo long after the souls of Minister Goodwinʼs poor daughters have been laid to rest. This is oral history refashioned by a poet who can make the vernacular sacred and the profane profound.” —JERRY BRADLEY, poetry editor, Concho River Review and author of Simple Versions of Disaster.
Reviews
“Cooperman is an unusual and distinctive poet. He writes against many of the current trends in modern poetry, without taking obvious exception to them. In a time when many poets make their own personae the central issue of their work, Cooperman is almost entirely self-effacing. He has never claimed a large amount of attention in the world of contemporary poets, though he is widely published in poetry magazines and journals and his books have been published by respected small presses. He deserves more attention. His dedication to poetry, narrative, and stories of the human heart and experience has been heroic.” Online review: Hugh Ruppersburg at blogcritic.com
“…a story of discovery. Whether it’s a damaged woman finding unlikely salvation on an “excursion outside [her] bed of pain,” or a Jewish journalist seeing the humanity…the only way to come to terms with our true selves is to push the body and the soul to their limits.” newpages.com
“…a quest story in the centuries-old tradition of Homer and Chaucer, a tradition that carries on through the Clint Eastwood westerns of the 70s and Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1990…Cooperman’s poems capture the best and worst of humanity: murder, lust, greed, racism, and vengeance co-exist with love, valor, perseverance, and redemption. Rooted in history, this poetry collection is filled with action and suspense, reads like a good novel, and ends far too soon. —Richard Allen Taylor
Mainstreetrag.com
Percy Gilmore Takes Shooting Lessons from John Sprockett
“Both eyes open,” he admonished,
which would have been risible,
since one of his was grizzly gouged;
but one never laughs at John Sprockett,
unless one has grown weary of life.
“Pull the trigger,” he said, “don’t squeeze,
or you’ll never hit your man.”
That dread word, “Man,” sent a spider
scuttling down my spine,
for I’d assured myself my task
on this posse was merely to chronicle
Mr. Sprockett’s dreadful exploits.
Last, Mr. Sprockett pronounced,
“And never think someone
who might’ve had a sweet mama
and a Bible strict daddy is standing
on the deadly end of your bullet.”
I took a breath deep as a mineshaft,
aimed the rifle at a bottle, and pulled.
A puff of smoke, and the vessel vanished.
He pointed to another bottle farther away;
again, a shattering, smoke, and obliteration.
“My God, Mr. Gilmore,” he proclaimed,
and pointed to a more distant pinecone,
and again, a direct hit, a palpable hit!
“You’re ready!” he slapped my back.
Anathema to us Jews, even one in hiding,
to take life. “But,” I silently raged,
“had you used weapons against Cossacks,
you might have saved darling Sisters,
dear Mother, and wisest Father.”
