Customer Reviews

Actual Air

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

A copy of this book is bumping along the bottom of the Colorado River heading toward Lake Mead. But before it went overboard: One afternoon in camp, while someone was cooking dinner, I was reading the Lincoln poem out loud to another guy on the trip. By the time I read a third selection from the book (at my friend's request) five or six other people had gathered around and were listening. I don't think any of us read poetry for recreation, but this book resonates, we could all tell that; and it was written with the ambition of being human, and as Grand as the Canyon. It ticks me off that this review protocal forces me to assign a number of stars. You can't count stars.

I bought this because I love the Silver Jews and Berman's words are probably the best part of their music. Like his lyrics, this is brilliant, thought-provoking, and clever... not pretensious at all in my opinion (see guy below). The best description that keeps popping into my head is "full of revelations".. maybe *that* is pretensious but that's what i think. My favorite "revelation" (or "pretensious" moment, if you think): "As a way of getting in touch with my origins / every night I set the alarm clock / for the time I was born, so that waking up / becomes a historical reenactment". Simply a very enjoyable, funny read all the way through. If you like the Joos, get this. If you like this, get some Silver Jews. If you don't know either...try one!

Saint David the prolific is once again saving our souls. The book carries an honesty and clarity rare in modern poetry, or modern life for that matter. The works here harken back to a time earlier this evening, as you sat at the table, staring at your glass of milk and wondering why your older brother never calls you. It's a simple choice for you, read it now or spend hours agonizing about the time you wasted without these words in your heart. When your heart swells you will understand. May the Silver Jew ride off into the sunset, in a chevy nova listening to steppenwolf. Berman, I salute you.

bermans poems are delightfull, his wit is alive and relevant. he takes apart the regular inbetween moments we take for granted and lets us appreciate them. never before have a read another persons work and left it so sure that i knew what he had to say, as if his voice was an older, sharper version of our own. to ignore this book of poems is to close your ears to a powerfull voice of the american experiance.

Is it negative to call David Berman's work "Actual Air" an immensely entertaining work? Would he, would any poet, prefer his or her work to be called important or profound? Should a reader sit and read each stanza aloud, let it reverberate, and allow its meaning to fall from the air like mist? Or should one tear through all forty poems with reckless abandon, like I did with "Actual Air".

Berman does have a healthy dollop of poetic pretensions, but it seems most modern poets can not avoid this problem. Perhaps it is due to the overwhelming self-centeredness the art form has grown into. Moments do shine, where, almost in a winking with the reader, Berman speaks plainly. In these moments the profundity emanates from the simplicity.

Right away, in the second poem, 'Classic Water':

and I remember how I would always refer to her boyfriends
as what's-his-face, which was wrong of me and I'd like
to apologize to those guys right now, wherever they are:

No one deserves to be called what's-his-face.

Simple and severe, humorous and sad. This mish-mash of emotional content written as humorous anecdotal lines is plentiful throughout the book.

From 'Self Portrait at 28':

We will travel to Mars
even as folks on Earth
are still ripping open potato chip
bags with their teeth.

The above mixes the complex with the simple, the future and the past become one.

In 'CORAL GABLES':

"I refuse to be the middleman in a relationship
between you and the florist."

A fittingly hilarious and sad remark. This book is recommended.

david berman's interrogation of the nostalgic is well - it's great because it makes me think of the old arrested frontier - i'm a cowboy. youre a cowboy. this is actual, not virtual.

this has to do with his capacity to hypostatize the corporeal in a reluctance to get hung up over cookie factories or sliding scale payment plans. the result? it makes you believe in me and me in you. that intersubjectivity that lies at the base of every american community is HERE, actual air - i salute people constantly.

There remains some question regarding my thorough completion of the tome, but none about the clarity of Mr. DC Berman's mystical vision, to wit: give a man a suit, he'll dress for a day, but give him a Botany 500 and he'll found Microsoft. Or something.

Berman is worshiping at the Church of Bill Knott and exploring the same territory that Knott explored in the 60s and 70s, that Knott acolytes Harrison Fisher did in the 70s and 80s and that Jeff McDaniel has been doing with a more self-deprecating manner through the late 90s. If you like Berman check them out. And check out Ron Koertge's work as well. He's been doing the West Coast version of same for eons now.

I've ordered Actual Air a couple times from amazon, and both orders were cancelled due to the book being unavailable. Luckily I found it at Drag City's website, which is the record label that the Silver Jews are on. The available edition is hardcover, limited, and more expensive but well worth it b/c it's a gorgeous cloth binding w/ Berman's facsimile autograph etched into the back board. His poetry is fun, and the images can be so simple & fine that I see why some "poets" have a problem w/ someone who makes it look so easy.

This is my favorite book of poems. He uses interesting language by allowing his words to speak in a different way. He has an interesting view of the world "It had been four days of no weather as if nature had conceded its genius to the indoors."
It is the kind of book that you can keep reading on any day.