Wyn Cooper: Poetry without Maps Brattleboro Literary Festival, October 14, 2018   Many of you probably know Wyn Cooper as quite the man-about-town here in Brattleboro—the subject of all kinds of “Did you know?” questions among the many people who know Wyn. For example, did you know that he’s from Detroit? Did you know that this apparently mild-mannered guy races down the slopes at Mount Snow at more than sixty miles per hour? Did you know that Wyn taught at Marlboro College before the Cheryl Crow Band made a monster hit song, “All I Wanna Do,” out of his poem “Fun,” after the bass player happened to pick up a copy of his first book while the band was on tour? Did you know that, with this rocket-propelled start, Wyn has become an accomplished songwriter who has made two albums with his novelist buddy, Madison Smartt Bell? And did you know that Wyn is the author of five volumes of poetry? Above all, did you know how damn good he is?       Case in point: his most recent book, Mars Poetica, is a collection of short, cool, knowing poems that leave the reader a bit slack-jawed, a bit elevated. Now, poets like to talk about a good poem having a “turn”—a point at which the poem slips into another dimension. Wyn is the master of the turn. His poems turn on a dime—or a rhyme, or an idea. Swagger morphs into dagger, and it’s a dagger to the heart. Loves conjures loaves and then lives, and the various meanings all snowball together, as they do in all our lives. You never know how a Wyn Cooper poem will turn out. This is poetry of discovery driven by sound, by sense, by intuition—poetry without maps.       Please welcome a local boy made good, a man I’m proud to call my friend, Wyn Cooper.   © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont October 2018   top of page   other essays   e-mail to Mike   Fox Paws home page