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. First, not using the commas in “finally setting sun”, so that it means the sun is finally setting, rather than one that has built the plot that involves the setting sun… a subtle thing but one that changes the meaning for the best; “flat earth of chessboards” evokes both the reality that in a sense “chessboards” were, in game form, the depiction of war, but at the same time the idea that the upper classes perhaps played this game, among others, during their salons; “John Webster’s antique jive” then breaks the spell.

I came to this collection shamefully late, especially considering the more than a decade under the influence of his music in Silver Jews, of which David Berman is the frontman along with members of the band Pavement (including the always amazing Stephen Malkmus and on a few Bonnie 'Prince' Billy tracks). In the ideal world, or the world as written by a first-time novelist romanticizing their coming-of-age as if it meant anything to anyone other than them, I would have bought this at 16 and at 21 bought James Tate because of the blurb from him on the back, then cried at 29 when Tate passed. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. Hearing that David Berman is gone really stung today, not just because the way his poetry, music and lyrics have had a large impact on me throughout my life--particularly in hard times, but mostly because he was such a bright light while enduring his own personal struggles that eventually became too much for him.

While such poems can seem as performance-oriented as a Spalding Gray monologue, Berman anticipates the criticism in ""Cassette County"" which ends with the compound koan ""anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship.

Drag City has reprinted Actual Air, the acclaimed book of poetry from Silver Jews and Purple Mountains’ David Berman, who died last August. I knew that the best things were hidden, and all of this was said in a private voice, a cousin to the one I used to speak to pets. Instead, I guess I'll be at home, having dinner with my wife, watching my cats laze around and play, watching the late-summer sunlight fade out of the sky through the red maple in my front yard, trying to appreciate again the way the dark leaves change color as the light of the day changes, from a kind of amber to something more inky as evening comes, maybe I'll also listen to some records by the man I was going to be seeing play his music live for the second time in my life. 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. As Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Tate said, "These poems are beautiful, strange, intelligent, and funny.These artists are suffering and I'd trade all the comfort of their music for them to have not been suffering. I do know that many lines here are etched deeply in my soul, and I've given away at least three copies of this book. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Frontman for the poetical alternative rock band the Silver Jews, Berman has written a book of poems that, like all poetry by rock lyricists, puts the fans' fantasies of rock's ""high art"" quotient to the test.