Actual Air 1890447048, 9781890447045

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, ''3::..hs··+:t.. 2,Li'.t ',·. · . t. ·...4-#::$. '„,il..4.- ':.EL,i...JAW·n Frazier, Brett Ralph, Betsey Schniidt, 1 trick Wh·aleti, Rc,c Etliridge, Cassie Al·.irrett,.ind itlever F icit-enstein.

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Praise for actual air "David Berman possesses the

most engrossing new poetic

voice I have he·ard in many years of hard listening. When I first read him, I thought: so this is the voice I have been w·airing so long to hear,

voice, I wish in some poems, were my own. Any reader who tunes into his snappy, off-beat a

meditations is in for a steady infusion of surprises and

-Billy Collins

delights.

"Aitual,·li, is one of the funniest, smartest, .ind sweetest books

of the year, a collection of sn·apshots colored ecstatically outside the lines. This is the absurd American sublime, poetry that

-GQ

raises the stakes on the everyday and bluffs the bluffers." "

When was the last time you picked up

a

volume of poetry

and found yourself hanging on every word, reading it all the

way through in

a

single sitting and then going back to the

beginning? This first collection from Berman is that kind of

book. Full of casually sharp observations about the most mundane subjects. Ai,- is funny, weird, and profound, whether it's tackling the nature of hallways or the architecture of back pain." "

In Berman's universe, time

-Entertainment Weekly slips lazily on by, life is thoroughly

strange and perpetually interesting, and there's no reason why

a man shouldn't sit down on a Thursday afternoon in May and learn some new facts about animals."

-Time Out New York

"Actital Air· is ·idu·U poetry. Berman is on a mission to

make the world strange, to find in the doo-dads of d·aily life ·a profound weirdness...which makes for a rarity in -S'·in

cc,ntemporary poetry.

"Berman's debut announces the disccivery of.2 great

American poetic storytelling voice by a new generation." -Publishers Weekly

Poetry David Berman is a young Virginian poet with a sly, intense regard for the past. He comes on like a prankster, restocking the imperial orations of Wallace Stevens and

the byzontine monologues of lohn Ashbery with the pop-

cultural bric-o-brac of a new generation: "i am not a cub scout seduced by iron Maident mirror worlds." But his words have an easy, eloquent gait: each line needs to

be a line. The landscapes are crisply American, and history, especially Southern history, casts a shadow.

-The New Yorker 1

-/

David Berman's poems are beautiful, strange, intelligent and funny. They are narratives that freeze life in impossible

contortions. They take the familiar and make it new, so

§

new the reader is stunned and will not soon forget. 1 found much to savor on every poge of Actual Air. lt's a book

for everyone.

-james Tate 158N 1-890447-04-8

OPEN CITY BOOKS U.S. $12.95/CAN. $20.95 Open City Book, are distributed by Publishen GrouD West

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