The Finch at the Feeder

What child of the 90’s didn’t own a copy of post-punk group Chumbawamba’s breakout record Tubthumper? The album with the purple baby on the front is a pop-culture artifact—an instantly recognizable record that was in virtually everyone’s collection, from pop-music junkies to indie kids, from alternative rockers to hardcore punks. There was only one problem with the album—it didn’t meet anyone’s expectations.

See, Chumbawamba became a household name upon the release of their single “Tubthumping,” the dance rock hit that spent 3 months at the top of the charts, not to mention in everyone’s heads. So beloved was the song, in fact, that millions rushed out to by this record from a band they’d never heard of, hoping to get more songs with the same catchy party-pop sensibilities.

Instead, they got album full of experimental oddities, spoken-word clips, strange instrumentation, and a lot of other stuff that was decidedly un-fun. “Tubthumping” was a fluke, or at least was completely unrepresentative of Chumbawamba’s art as a whole.

After reading actual air, I feel like I purchased Tubthumper all over again. It isn’t that it is a bad book—far from it—instead, it is an unexpected book, a book that sets itself up one way, and then goes in an entirely different direction, never to return.

I bought actual air because I had loved “Snow,” “Classic Water,” and “The Charm of 5:30,” three of the poems featured in Part I of the book. All three are straightforward narratives, sharp with insight and image, completely beautiful and absolutely touching.

Indeed, most of the poems in Part I can be described in this way. Although the three I had read before picking up actual air are still my favorites, poems like "Imagining Defeat" and "The Moon" stand out for their soft, charming quirkiness and unique turns of phrase. One sample line: “Then she brought something black up to her mouth / a plum I thought, but it was an asthma inhaler.”

It is in parts 2 and 3, however, that the book takes an odder, less-accessible turn. Multi-part poems that go on for 8 pages, loose associations that leave their poems anchorless, and an affinity for the crass (“We watched ‘motherfuckers’ crackle out of his mouth. / He wanted something. Something like a mini-mart blowjob.”) seem almost completely unrelated to the sweet, quiet poems that usher them in.

Even the subject matter in parts 2 and 3 is a vast contrast to that which is found in part 1. Part 1 features personal poems that seem at once intimate and universal. Parts 2 and 3 have got everything from anti-establishment to sci-fi. “The Night Nurse Essays” is even part murder mystery.

In all three parts, Berman makes it clear that he has a thing for sound. Even in some of the book’s worst poems, redemption is found in lines like “She wore a dress of voting booth curtains / to a party at the coroner’s split-level ranch.” Berman is the front man for a rock band called Silver Jews, and his rhythms carry over nicely into his poetry.

All in all, I can’t really say too much against this book. There aren’t any bad poems here, and, while the latter poems might not be as easy to emotionally connect with, it is hard not to get excited by Berman’s technique. No, the real problem with this book lies with the reader, namely me. I bought it expecting the confessional, the intimate, the emotionally vulnerable. What I got was a solid book of poems that has more to say than I could’ve thought possible. Despite the missed expectations, I wouldn’t hesitate to call Berman a great contemporary poet.

Which is more than I can say for anyone in Chumbawamba.

The Night, The Porch

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting
For something whose appearance would be its vanishing---
The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,
Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells us much, and was never written with us in mind.

The Charm Of 5:30


It's too nice a day to read a novel set in England.

We're within inches of the perfect distance from the sun,
the sky is blueberries and cream,
and the wind is as warm as air from a tire.
Even the headstones in the graveyard
Seem to stand up and say "Hello! My name is..."

It's enough to be sitting here on my porch,
thinking about Kermit Roosevelt,
following the course of an ant,
or walking out into the yard with a cordless phone
to find out she is going to be there tonight

On a day like today, what looks like bad news in the distance
turns out to be something on my contact, carports and white
courtesy phones are spontaneously reappreciated
and random "okay"s ring through the backyards.

This morning I discovered the red tints in cola
when I held a glass of it up to the light
and found an expensive flashlight in the pocket of a winter coat
I was packing away for summer.

It all reminds me of 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.

You know what I'm talking about,

and that's the kind of fellowship that's taking place in town, out in
the public spaces. You won't overhear anyone using the words
"dramaturgy" or "state inspection today. We're too busy getting along.

It occurs to me that the laws are in the regions and the regions are
in the laws, and it feels good to say this, something that I'm almost
sure is true, outside under the sun.

Then to say it again, around friends, in the resonant voice of a
nineteenth-century senator, just for a lark.

There's a shy looking fellow on the courthouse steps, holding up a
placard that says "But, I kinda liked Reagan." His head turns slowly
as a beautiful girl walks by, holding a refrigerated bottle up against
her flushed cheek.

She smiles at me and I allow myself to imagine her walking into
town to buy lotion at a brick pharmacy.
When she gets home she'll apply it with great lingering care before
moving into her parlor to play 78 records and drink gin-and-tonics
beside her homemade altar to James Madison.

In a town of this size, it's certainly possible that I'll be invited over
one night.

In fact I'll bet you something.

Somewhere in the future I am remembering today. I'll bet you
I'm remembering how I walked into the park at five thirty,
my favorite time of day, and how I found two cold pitchers
of just poured beer, sitting there on the bench.

I am remembering how my friend Chip showed up
with a catcher's mask hanging from his belt and how I said

great to see you, sit down, have a beer, how are you,
and how he turned to me with the sunset reflecting off his contacts
and said, wonderful, how are you.

At The Poetry Reading

I can't keep my eyes off the poet's
wife's legs—they're so much more
beautiful than anything he might
be saying, though I'm no longer
in a position really to judge,
having stopped listening some time ago.
He's from the Iowa Writers Workshop
and can therefore get along fine
without my attention. He started in
reading poems about his childhood—
barns, cornsnakes, gradeschool, flowers,
that sort of stuff—the loss of
innocence he keeps talking about
between poems, which I can relate to,
especially under these circumstances.
Now he's on to science, a poem
about hydrogen, I think, he's trying
to imagine himself turning into hydrogen.
Maybe he'll succeed. I'm imagining
myself sliding up his wife's fluid,
rhythmic, lusciously curved, black-
stockinged legs, imagining them arched
around my shoulders, wrapped around my back.
My God, why doesn't he write poems about her!
He will, no doubt, once she leaves him,
leaves him for another poet, perhaps,
the observant, uninnocent one, who knows
a poem when it sits down in a room with him.