Cappelbaum Poems

An author photograph of Stanley Cooperman

Cappelbaum is the alter ego of the late, obscure Jewish-American (and later Canadian) poet Stanley Cooperman who shot himself in his North Vancouver home on April 26, 1976, thereby freeing Cappel­baum from roaming the earth as a sort of postmodern Wandering Jew.

I first encoun­tered Cappel­baum when I found a copy of Cannibals in the donation bin at the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library, where I used to volunteer circa 1998. I first used the purloined nomen in "Cappelbaum's Protest" in 2003. Since that time, I have been keeping the legend of the name alive in the following poems.

Speaking of afterlives, in 2014 (I learned this six years after the fact), Michael Curran republished a selection titled Cappelbaum's Lament & Other Poems. Cappel­baum dances on.