Actual Air: Poems

Rating:
Summary: read this book...
Review: my whole life i walked down dusty roads, my own shadow taunted me... i left home for experience, settled in a land of curious inhabitants... met Dave Berman, a psychedlic mentor, drank his exilir, he showed me his dancing coins... we went to battle, our blood mixed with that of our enemy... years later i returned to my community with new gifts and powers...

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious and insightful.
Review: Poetry is a medium normally associated with people so out of touch with reality that their main concerns are love, death, and the generally intangible. Berman understands this, and has published a book of remarkably down-to-earth yet surreal poetry that seems more comfortable concerning itself with the mundane. His "Self-Portrait At 28" is the central opus, a sprawling epic of high-school heavy metal T-shirts, space travel, technological nervous breakdowns, hills, psychedelia, and dogs that still somehow manages to be bizarrely moving. It's probably a cliché to say that it's a book "for everyone", but nevertheless, it's an apt term for a book so full of thought and imagination. Music fans, check the Silver Jews too, especially the "American Water" record.

Rating:
Summary: Words thin, yet runny, causing my shoes to go "squish"
Review: Pretend that Charles Simic and Russell Edson had a love child who was then brought up listening on headphones to scratchy recordings of very old Talking Heads songs in the left chanel, and very old Bob Dylan in the right chanel. Then get this child drunk and strip him naked and let him run around in the woods during a full moon in late August. Listen to his stories. They will sound like Berman's. I promise.

Rating:
Summary: Actual Air made me taller and more handsome!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Actual Air made me taller and more handsome!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: the Botany 500 of Charlottesville-inspired whimsy-rock
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: He is the American Waters?
Review: They say Steinbrenner got his start in shipping. Kid, drop the whole Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking hokum and give us some more of this stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Actual Brilliance
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Actual Brilliance
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Suburban Kids With Biblical Names
Review: When I was a kid, my mom used to always say that she'd be home from work in time to take me to soccer practice. But she rarely was. Luckily, I lived across the street from the soccer field and I was seldom late. However, I lived in a little apartment with my mom and sister and kids sometimes commented about it. "At least I don't live in some crummy apartment" they'd say. Something else happened in soccer that was bad. We were supposed to bring orange (pronounced ar-inge on the East Coast) slices or pop (again, sodas on the East Coast) to a designated game. When it was my turn to bring orange slices, my mom was late. All of the kids were complaining that they wouldn't have these citrus delights to suck on durning half-time. The coach felt bad for me and wouldn't tell the other kids who was supposed to have brought the orange slices. But my mom showed up halfway through the game with the orange slices and all the kids looked at me said "Oh, so it was you that was supposed to bring them." I just feel sorry for the kid who brought grapefruit juice instead of pop.