Actual Air

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David Kirby of The New York Times likened the "whimsy" of Actual Air to the works of poets Mark Halliday and Campbell McGrath, but felt "In their poems, though, whimsy always leads to serious ideas and emotions that don't consistently materialize here. These poems are like Berman's songs in most ways: some are killers, some are sleepers, some are neither here nor there. Frontman for the poetical alternative rock band the Silver Jews, Berman has written a book of poems that, like all poetry by rock lyricists, puts the fans' fantasies of rock's ""high art"" quotient to the test. Here, one might accuse Berman of trafficking in overused tropes: the depressed artist scribbling in the margins of books, thinking of some sort of music or anchor in the arts to ballast themselves with.

He has a firm control of much of his material; a good sense of balance between narrative passages and more free-association types of passages; and a sense of what will be evocative, what will seem like some sort of subtle twist. The Virginia-born poet and the lead singer of the Silver Jews expresses his observations of pop-culture, Southern history, souvenirs, community colleges, back pain, hallways, and the weirdness of daily life. Over and over again his music and poetry made meaning for me and comforted me and made me laugh and made me sad and made me look at the objects and people and situations of this world in a new light.has been a dark year, and hearing lines like "I spent a decade playing chicken with oblivion" can be a comfort when you finally feel understood. David Berman's poems obviously share a lot of resemblance to his lyrics—and a few of them even feel like they were written as songs—but his poems speak to me in a way that even my favorite Silver Jews songs do not.

Shortly after his death, the label Jagjaguwar shared a narrative poem he wrote in 2016 for the label’s 20th anniversary. Some of what works about "Snow" --Berman's playfulness and seeming endless supply of fresh, spot-on images/metaphors, --thankfully show up throughout the collection, keeping the reader amused, awakened, and impressed. i love david berman’s songwriting, but he’s able to link disparate images more effectively with an instrumental backing. It's also a good reminder to check in on those who always seem to understand and be a support, we can't forget they need support as well. However, overall, I’d recommend it for its strengths, and it does seem to fit certain kinds of moods and inspirations.self-portrait at 28" is a work of particular brilliance; each time i read it i am piqued and comforted, loving it anew. The poetry has “music”; when read aloud, one gets more from it than when one reads it on the page in many spots. The longer poems don’t tend to hold together (the centerpiece of the collection, “Michener’s Cantos [selections],” seems to focus around the concept of the “Polish joke”, and is probably in most of its sections a bit thin to justify its length). In her 2009 book Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture, Kaya Oakes wrote, "In many ways, just as indie rock was nudging its way toward the mainstream, Actual Air helped to open the doors for independent publishing to do the same. I can’t count the number of times I’ve sang and strummed to an audience of stars and moon the song Random Rules, or took years off my eardrums to The Wild Kindness or Punks in the Beerlight.

While such poems can seem as performance-oriented as a Spalding Gray monologue, Berman anticipates the criticism in ""Cassette County"" which ends with the compound koan ""anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship. His band, the Silver Jews, has released four albums, The Natural Bridge, Starlite Walker, American Water, and Bright Flight, on Drag City Records ( www.Instead of a long and ultimately not satisfactory review, I'll simply quote just a few of my favorite lines from this collection (if the pages with dog ears give me any idea of how many quotes I wanted to remember, it looks like I enjoyed one from at least each page). a lot of these poems made me smile and sometimes laugh, and wish that I could inhabit the little world of feelings they create. David Berman reinvents the overlooked and seemingly ordinary details of everyday life--from the suitcase of a departing girlfriend to a baseboard electrical outlet. However, the first poem in this collection, "Snow", I had read before; it may be a "greatest hit" of sorts for him, as there seem to be a lot of online references and commentary about it.

But, whereas "Snow" has a sense of unity and direction (the relationship between the brothers and the on-going, growing story of the angels), many of the other poems seem to lack these.My favorite poems: "Cassette County," "New York, New York," "Community College in the Rain," and the first four in the book.