Two Deadhead Poetry Books Donated to Archive

The Archive is delighted to announce the recent gift of two books of poetry by Robert Cooperman, an award-winning poet and author of sixteen books whose many accolades include the Colorado Book Award for Poetry. Recently he was named as a finalist for the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year.

These two books, Not Too Old to Rock and Roll (Snark 2003) and A Tale of the Grateful Dead (Main Street Rag 2004), are of interest to Dead scholars and fans for their powerful, thoughtful and deeply evocative verse treatments of themes dear to Deadheads. Cooperman is known to Dead scholars for his appearances at the annual Southwest/Texas American and Popular Culture Association conferences, where he read his Dead-related work, and one of his poems, “Halloween Costume Party,” was published in Dead Letters: Essays on the Grateful Dead Phenomenon, Vol. 1 (2001).

These two books capture Cooperman’s range nicely, from the more formal, studied exposition of the interlinked poems comprising A Tale of the Grateful Dead to the delightful, and occasionally haunting, poems that trace some of the broad arcs of Deadhead experience in Not Too Old to Rock and Roll.

Deadhead literary scholars and the Archive owe Cooperman thanks for his generous gift—and Deadheads everywhere owe him thanks for his poetic tribute to the Grateful Dead.