As with DFW, it is hard to separate their early death from their work when you--in retrospect--can see it all so clearly, but what we should be more interested in is their lives and their ability to be such a lovely soul in all the darkness. 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).

and now "Range Life" by Pavement is Playing, so fans of good indie rock like good books too, I'm not the only one, you mean people actually read books!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. In closing he wrote that ' He’d gone down into the well of infinite sadness, beyond the reach of story, and he didn’t make it out it. 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.

David Berman reinvents the overlooked and seemingly ordinary details of everyday life--from the suitcase of a departing girlfriend to a baseboard electrical outlet. The poetry has “music”; when read aloud, one gets more from it than when one reads it on the page in many spots. 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". And while these can be funny and entertaining individually, whole poems composed of them quickly become old: "The evening train is a literary device.In "Snow" for example, the speaker teases a younger sibling, telling him that some snow angels they find ". The older brother, meantime, has gone on to thinking about other things, but prompted by his brother's queries, he elaborates on the story even more.

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. What Berman always pulled off exceptionally well is to place the dark lyrics into an upbeat song (listen to the first few tracks of Purple Mountains for a perfect example) and so often we find those who manage to appear upbeat are also hurting inside. 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. 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.Drag City has reprinted Actual Air, the acclaimed book of poetry from Silver Jews and Purple Mountains’ David Berman, who died last August. Robert Bingham, founder and then-editor of the New York literary magazine Open City had already published a few of Berman's poems. In conversation with Mason, Billy Collins said the poems of Actual Air "are full of complex turns and tricks and conceptual hijinks, and yet there's this surface clarity. Actual Air by David Berman is a refreshing glass of reality, a chance to see the world like ‘ seeing rain / in it’s original uncut form. Berman manages to drill to the core of life and fill you with all it’s glory, dredging up an understanding of the beauty in life that you didn’t realize you possessed, all written so seemingly effortlessly and engagingly accessible without sacrificing content, depth or style.