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Contemporaries Essays, David Berman

Contemporaries Essays, David Berman

From Vault to Humbling Void: David Berman’s Attention Ecosystem

In a long-lost Fader interview that resurfaced the day after David Berman’s death, Nick Weidenfeld levels charges of solipsism and lack of empathy that he defines as “an inability to…

Contemporaries Essays, David Berman

Postscript

David Berman is the only poet I’ve ever known. He didn’t call himself one. He didn’t dabble in poetry. He didn’t try to impress people with his poetry. When I…

Contemporaries Essays, David Berman

David Berman’s Edge Cities: Poetry, Commercial Real Estate, Municipal Feeling

In Roe Ethridge’s cover photograph for David Berman’s book of poems Actual Air (1999), two glass office towers rise over a row of pines (fig. 1). Below, a dry and…

Contemporaries Essays, David Berman

Think of Me as a Place: David Berman’s Rooms in Time

In “Snow,” the opening poem of David Berman’s first and only collection Actual Air, the speaker walks through a winter scene with his younger brother: I pointed to a place…

Contemporaries Essays, David Berman

Slipping Between Worlds in Actual Air

Actual Air was the first book of poetry I read that felt contemporary. It was 2003 or so and the book had been published by Open City in 1999. I…

Contemporaries Essays, David Berman

Bridge Ethics

A rabbi, a real cabbalist, once said that in order to establish the reign of peace it is not necessary to destroy everything or to begin a completely new world….

Contemporaries Essays, David Berman

David Berman, Ambivalent Aphorist

“Songs are like tattoos.” In the hours after news of David Berman’s tragic death swept across social media in August 2019, I found myself remembering Joni Mitchell’s memorable line about…

Contemporaries Essays, David Berman

Introduction

David Berman — musician, poet, accidental comedian, non-accidental philosopher — released seven albums, one book of poetry, a collection of cartoons and a handful of EPs. He didn’t tour his…

Contemporaries Essays, Feel Your Fantasy: The Drag Race Cluster

Drag is the Medium [Outro]

In the lightly edited interview that follows, Ian Morrison — who performs as Brittany Lynn, and is the Don of Philly’s Drag Mafia — says his priority is for folks…