First Touch

by Glenn W. Cooper. 28 pages. $5.00. Plus $2.00 for shipping. Bottle of Smoke Press, Bill R. Roberts, Editor, 9002 Wilson Drive Dover, Delaware, 19904. www.bospress.net

Book Review by Michael Basinski

Glenn Cooper notes in one of his poems that his great talent is getting off the bus at the right stop. That is a great event! It is not the struggle of getting on but the tiny pleasure of being conscience at a point of departure. To follow ones destiny and enjoy it, yes, that is a talent. He lets his daughter dig in her nose because she likes to dig in her nose and he is a proponent of human pleasure. It is the small pressure the magic of the everyday event that is celebrated in Glenn Cooper’s poems. Each one is a little pleasure about the poet living in the middle of himself living life. The lines are easy flowing, flowing cadence, poems without complication, with humor and surprise, with the ironies that present themselves in any day of living. Living is speaking, speaking poetry. Each day for the poet is poetry. A thing to remember recalled over ad over by reading Glenn Cooper.