Actual Air
by David Berman
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Book Summary Information
Author: David BermanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-07
ISBN: 1890447048
Number of pages: 93
Publisher: Grove Press, Open City Books
Book Reviews of Actual Air
Book Review: Easily one of the best books I've read so far in 2006.
Summary: 5 Stars
David Berman, Actual Air (Open City, 1999)
In one of David Berman's amazing poems, we get this passage:
"He wasn't sure how the bathroom mirror worked
but decided it must be powered
by the razor blades and aspirin
he found in the engine compartment.
It was a matter of relearning everything
after he surfaced from the coma."
(--"Cantos for James Michener, Part II", XCVI)
In the fifth and sixth lines there, Berman has summed up, with grace, wit, and perfect accuracy, exactly what poetry is about. And in Actual Air, he realizes this concept over and over again. These are poems that are continually surprising, delightful, sometimes downright funny. They exist for the purpose of seducing the reader (and, perhaps, the poet) into looking at the world in a different way than usual. Berman does what the best do-- takes obvious things and juxtaposes them in such a way that we see them in a new light, but that such new light seems obvious, something you would have seen yourself had you simply known to look for it. The medicine cabinet as engine compartment for the bathroom mirror? That's genius, folks.
The much-vaunted Billy Collins blurbed this book, and says in part that Berman has "...the voice I have been waiting so long to hear, a voice, I wish in some poems, were my own." Indeed. This is the type of poetry that is capable of making the most stouthearted of poets break down and weep out of sheer, bitter jealousy, even as that poet hungrily turns to the next page to see what fresh hell is to be found there. And, even more impressive, every page will offer you something.
"He was my assistant wrestling coach,
sobbing ni the white ruins of his kitchen
for the olde tymes when the towne hospital was fringed
with icicles
and the dogtrack
stands were packed with his friends.
Instead of helping I sat and watched,
desperately afraid that someone would append
a suffix to my name."
(--"They Don't Acknowledge the Letter C")
When I discover a poet I haven't read before who is capital-G great, I get this unmistakable feeling in my gut. There are a lot of books that make me want to write; there are very few that make me wonder why I have ever considered myself a poet. This is one of them. I haven't felt this way about discovering a new poet since I first read Ira Sadoff almost ten years ago.
Watch this kid. If his first book is any indication, he will be the finest writer of his generation. *****
Summary of Actual Air
David Berman reinvents the overlooked and seemingly ordinary details of everyday life--from the suitcase of a departing girlfriend to a baseboard electrical outlet. His poems chart a course through his own highly original American dreamscape in language that is fresh, accessible, and remarkably precise. This debut collection has received extraordinary acclaim from readers and reviewers alike and is quickly becoming a cult classic. As Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Tate said, "These poems are beautiful, strange, intelligent, and funny. . . . It's a book for everyone."
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