The Death and Rebirth of Ophelia

Robert Cooperman confesses that Macbeth, not Hamlet, is his favorite play by Shakespeare. In fact, The Death and Rebirth of Ophelia is his revenge on the play for having been forced to read it on all-too numerous occasions in high school, college, and graduate school, and has come to thoroughly detest the title character. So, one fine day the thought hit him over the head: What if Ophelia traded places with a woman who bore her an uncanny resemblance in the visiting acting troupe and left Elsinore with that troupe, to become a strolling player? Such is the premise of Cooperman’s latest poetry collection. In the past, he’s written about the Trojan War and its aftermath—The Ghosts and Bones of Troy (Kelsay Books, 2020), Lost on the Blood Dark Sea (FutureCycle Press, 2020), and Troy (March Street Press, 2011)—especially from the point of view of his first literary hero, Odysseus. Other collections have followed Cooperman’s hyper-violent Old West alter ego, John Sprockett, “that saint of s