Actual Air

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De enige dichtbundel van de geweldige David Berman, frontman van The Silver Jews en Purple Mountains (als je het nu hoort donderen ergens in de buurt van Keulen, luister naar zijn muziek, echt wereldtop). The book was originally published on paperback in 1999 by Open City; Drag City printed its first hardcover copies in 2003. Often as I read his poetry, I was struck by the idea that Berman used one of those word/phrase generators that push out unexpected combinations of words. He died in Park Slope, I was there just a few days before, visiting friends, wandering around, soaking in the beauty of a part of America I have come to really love in my later years. Certainly one could make up a story to connect these disparate images/phrases, but shouldn't it be the poet's job to help out in this process?

First, the title itself evokes the concept of what “Cassette country” would be… it made me think of things like mix tapes, old radios, and the row of cassettes one would have on their own cassette shelf. I think of the sky above the Italian restaurant I ate at in that neighborhood, shading into hues of blue and red, contoured with the paint strokes of clouds, the wine that was poured for us, the laughter between friends and the unconscious wonder at new experiences that might always be around the corner, when you are a visitor and traveler in a place that is not your home. I think Berman is quite evocative in that he places you somewhere, and things that evoke memories you have had (many of them being memories of music… others, of not quite being in the right place at the right time, or perhaps not even known what the right place is); but that’s different from being “about” something.I think there’s a sort of (potentially stereotype-like, though not to me) concept of what the working-class life might seem like in terms of day-to-day details at home with “appliance failures on Olive Street” and “the complex Italians versus the basic Italians”. Drag City has reprinted Actual Air, the acclaimed book of poetry from Silver Jews and Purple Mountains’ David Berman, who died last August. Seems it all could have been pulled by any sort of “provincial novel of British life” (to paraphrase the description appended to “Middlemarch’s” title). 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.

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. Something that always strikes me are artists who turn their personal struggles into something beautiful and while it may be there hand reaching out for help, it is also a hand that pulls those in need of some support and help up and says "i understand, I'm here, let's get through this together".

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There and elsewhere, Berman skillfully redeploys indie rock's elliptical, downbeat ethic in verse, proving his surrealist quotidian can be haunting in any medium: ""Back when we were interesting/ we had sunsets with play sadness. fm, and guess what just came on that's right "Send in The Clowns" by Sliver Jews, before that Mountian Goats and a Marcal Proust reading! However, despite his musical genius, Berman considers himself first and foremost a poet, as he should.

For example, Berman has a poem titled ‘The Moon’ which consists of these fascinating and powerful images of people finding their way through life and its absurdities then ends with the line ‘ and the moon, I forgot to mention the moon. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Other effective elements of "Snow"-- its clear sense of unity and direction-- seem lacking in many of the other poems, often leaving me floundering and annoyed.