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DC 198BK
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"Back in print for the first time this era is David Berman's Actual Air. Released in paperback in 1999 by the now-defunct Open City and praised everywhere in the then-ascendant print press industry (including names that still make waves today like The New Yorker and GQ), David Berman's first (and only) book of poetry was and is a journey though shared and unreliable memory. Uncannily inspired, Berman's poems walk through doors into rooms where one might hear 'I can't remember being born/and no one else can either/even the doctor who I met years later/at a cocktail party' (from 'Self-Portrait at 28'), or praise 'the interval called hangover/a sadness not co-terminous with hopelessness' (from 'Cassette Country') and 'that moment when you take off your sunglasses/after a long drive and realize it's earlier/and lighter out than you had accounted for' ('The Charm of 5:30'). At that time, Berman was called a modern-day Wallace Stevens and a contemporary of John Ashberry with his own logic, awareness of pop culture and sensitivity to the details of the post-postmodern world in his poems. Alongside his lyrics to a half-dozen infamous Silver Jews records, Actual Air endeared Berman to lovers of poetry, prose, and music alike. Poet James Tate said it best: 'It is a book for everyone.' And poet laureate Billy Collins could only add, 'This is the voice I've waited so long to hear.' The second edition of the hardcover version of Actual Air is limited to 1000 copies. Features of the second edition are: new larger dimensions and enlarged typeface, new dustjacket artwork variant, deluxe cloth boards, updated full-color endpapers, dust-jacket featuring a photo of the artist around the time of publication, and of course the poems that inspired all this fuss in the first place. Fans of Actual Air, get hard again!"
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Book
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DC 386BK
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"David Berman has spent the last two decades in the public eye, stalking out his own territory as the leader of the rock band Silver Jews as well as poet and writer of the book Actual Air. In both cases, his address to the world has been marked with a singular touch; a literate, yet low-budget approach to communicating the beauty and absurdity of Earth-based life. As his fans will tell you, his work exemplifies entertainment at her best. Over the course of this time, his drawings have accented lyric sheets, enlivened autograph sessions and eventually provoked more than one request for a collection of the same. This accounts for The Portable February, a cheaply-priced but handsomely appointed hardcover compendium of the Berman visual sensibility. The sound of David Berman is familiar to the popular music world. The look of Berman isn't far off: a left-handed, child-like scrawl, scored with a wit and observation that confutes the often primitive nature of his line. Running the gamut from faux-political to faux-New Yorker, Berman's cartoons incorporate strains of high comedy and low comedy, wistful Americana, contemporary art, dream visions and a visual analog to the semi-penetrable personal allusions that have comprised his writing over the years. The Portable February is funny, sure -- but it has as many moods as the day is long in the summer and short in the wintertime. As the artist himself put it, 'The drawings are pitched into some rudimentary space of public art, a place we might think of as between and below Gary Larson and Raymond Pettibon.' Whether or not you know it yet, this place is the size of your life or mine: portable but daily growing. Conveniently sized to put in your bag and carry away and painlessly priced as well... what better a fate for the shortest and hardest of all months?" 97 pages, black & white, hardcover.
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