Actual Air

Product Information

The book was originally published on paperback in 1999 by Open City; Drag City printed its first hardcover copies in 2003. Pitchfork may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. As Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Tate said, "These poems are beautiful, strange, intelligent, and funny.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. 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. 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.

Sometimes Berman so singularly wrangles English into uncanny, dream-logic revelation it gives me goddamn chills. I don't know much in this life, but I know that my life, and the lives of so many people I know, were made happier, and deeper, and stranger, and more beautiful, because David Berman lived and wrote. 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.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). David Berman reinvents the overlooked and seemingly ordinary details of everyday life--from the suitcase of a departing girlfriend to a baseboard electrical outlet.