David Berman reads two of his poems. . .

"Governors On Sominex" & "My Life at Home During Banking Hours."

David Berman's weblog:
http://mentholmountains.blogspot.com/
. . .
"Governors On Sominex"
___________________________
"It had been four days of no weather
as if nature had conceded its genius to the indoors.

They'd closed down the Bureau of Sad Endings
and my wife sat on the couch and read the paper out loud.

The evening edition carried the magic death of a child
backlit by a construction site sunrise on its front page.

I kept my back to her and fingered the items on the mantle.
Souvenirs only reminded you of buying them.

The moon hung solid over the boarded-up Hobby Shop.

P.K. was in the precinct house, using his one phone call
to dedicate a song to Tammy, for she was the light
by which he traveled into this and that

And out in the city, out in the wide readership,
his younger brother was kicking an ice bucket
in the woods behind the Marriott,

his younger brother who was missing that part of the brain
that allows you to make out with your pillow.
Poor kid.

It was the light in things that made them last.

Tammy called her caseworker from a closed gas station
to relay ideas unaligned with the world we loved.

The tall grass bent in the wind like tachometer needles
and he told her to hang in there, slowly repeating
the number of the Job Info Line.

She hung up and glared at the Killbuck Sweet Shoppe.
The words that had been running through her head,
"employees must wash hands before returning to work,"
kept repeating and the sky looked dead.

Hedges formed the long limousine a Tampa sky could die behind.
A sailor stood on the wharf with a clipper ship
reflected on the skin of the bell pepper he held.

He'd had mouthwash at the inn and could still feel
the ice blue carbon pinwheels spinning in his mouth.

There were no new ways to understand the world,
only new days to set our understandings against.

Through the lanes came virgins in tennis shoes,
their hair shining like videotape,

singing us into a kind of sleep we hadn't tried yet.

Each page was a new chance to understand the last.

And somehow the sea was always there to make you feel stupid."
___________________________
. . .
D.C. Berman (born January 4, 1967 in Williamsburg, Virginia) is best known as the fountainhead of the band Silver Jews (1989--2009, RIP,) formed with his fellow University of Virginia classmates, and Hoboken roommates, Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich. Mr. Malkmus, of course, went on to found Pavement.

I like the awkwardness of these readings. So sue me (paraphrasing Nathan Detroit.)

Go get 'Actual Air: Poems' by David Berman - I'm sure you can find it for under $10. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Tate said of it: "These poems are beautiful, strange, intelligent, and funny....It's a book for everyone".
And American Poet Laureate (2001-03) Billy Collins said, "This is the voice I have been waiting so long to hear....
...They are full of complex turns and tricks and conceptual hijinks, and yet there's this surface clarity. You're welcomed into the poem...
....Any reader who tunes in to his snappy, offbeat meditations is in for a steady infusion of surprises and delights."

+++++++

My other David Berman video with poetry, song, jokes, etcetera. . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRUbu3BeHow

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• David Berman
• poetry
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• poem
• Governors On Sominex
• My Life at Home
• During Banking Hours
• Dogs
• Godz
• Chairman of the Board

[unfocusedfears]

when did he do this reading? thanks for the post! :)

[FungusMossGnosis]

@unfocusedfears

Oh, I wish I knew. Sometime in the past decade.

The poems were written in the late 90s, I believe. Part of the 'Actual Air' book (released 1999.)

I've typed out the first one in the description.

You're very welcome. I'll try to slap together the other reading I have of Berman in the next day.

[dnggitg]

A Hopperesque Manhattan and I'm flying

away from it towards Planet Terror, where it is commonly

supposed that switching the willow differential

could avert a tsunami of jots and tittles. The rafterglow,

however, proves fleeting and all too unalloyed.

[dnggitg]

It regales us with communiqués whose blandishments

plane us down to a state of abject privation.

I can't honestly claim to admire it, but I discern

its general philanthropic bent. It's a play

about a Lamborghini what gets conscripted into

the French Foreign Legion. Directing it has been,

well, an ordeal! Rather like giving birth

to a dancing star.

[dnggitg]

And one can easily imagine Lamborghini as chuckwalla iguana to Hopper's gargoyle gekko. Still, I bid you good morning, even if you did arrive by Parcel Post. There'll be nobody there to greet you but a bevy of stubble-cheeked winos, most of whom were spirited away from the Kate Kennedy Club in retaliation for the exercise of their inalienable rights. You might as well make yourself comfortable. Okay then, I'll take you up on that coffee offer.

[JordanBandS]

I love D.C. Berman, his poetry is so vivid. It makes me miss things I have never known. His eye is amazing.

[tompaste]

great upload man