the atmosphere is not a perfume it is odorless, Poetry by Matthew Cooperman

Free Verse Editions / Parlor Press, June 2024

Bloodied, embattled, but still singing, Matthew Cooperman’s the atmosphere is not a perfume it is odorless addresses us: “America, aren’t you tired of being a gun ode?” In one register, a chromapoetics that examines the “red, white and blue” as an embodied, if problematic nationalism, in another, an extended ode project that conjures our troubling emblems of Empire, the poems in atmosphere—in their various configurations of apostrophe, atomization, song, dialectic, citation & eucharism—attempt to neutralize the personal, cultural and environmental dis-ease of 21st century America. Whitman, who provides the title, hovers near, reminding us of the dreams and responsibilities of freedom: “…absence, inspiration / it’s everyone’s problem.”

A durational project written over twenty years, Cooperman’s collection feels uncannily pointed at NOW. And the ode’s the hour’s vehicle. And what of the ode? An ancient three-part Greek lyric form, or could be. It could be sung, or danced, depending on the occasion, joy or lamentation. The ode is also a plea for what’s missing, a supplication through the mouth to what might deliver us from harm. Cooperman’s eighth book sings anodyne into a darkening wind.