Course:Actual Air by David Berman
| CRWR 501P 003 |
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| Advanced Writing of Poetry |
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| Important Course Pages |
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Actual Air by David Berman
19 years old and living in Montreal for the summer. Alone and then not alone, real fast. I punched a wall and broke my hand. Alone and then not alone. We went to see Pavement play at the end of July, a stop on their final tour. Listening to Pavement led to John introducing me to Silver Jews, introducing me to David Berman. He lent me Actual Air one night, I read it in one sitting. I am constantly craving the kinds of things that make me want to write, that make me want to make. These poems, from Berman's singularly windswept POV pushed me to take out a pencil and a piece of paper. To want to make my own painting with words. That summer I was surrounded by people and yet so lonely. It felt so good to swim in the waters of someone else's loneliness and find that they kept me afloat.
Imagining Defeat is one of my favourite moments in the whole book:
She woke me up at dawn,
her suitcase like a little brown dog at her heels.
I sat up and looked out the windowat the snow falling in the stand of blackjack trees.
A bus ticket in her hand.
Then she brought something black up to her mouth,a plum I thought, but it was an asthma inhaler.
I reached under the bed for my mentholsand she asked if I ever thought of cancer.
Yes, I said, but always as a tree way up aheadin the distance where it doesn't matter
And I suppose a dead soul must look back at that tree,so far behind his wagon where it also doesn't matter.
except as a memory of rest or water.
Though to believe any of that, I thought,you have to accept the premise
that she woke me up at all.
It's funny, or maybe not funny, but the same reason we lost David was the same reason I punched the wall in the first place.
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