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  • The Paris Review

    David Berman, Slacker God

    by Erin Somers Aug 08, 2019 3 minutes

    Pour another gallon into the bucket of our national grief, David Berman is gone. The poet and front man of the Silver Jews was fifty-two. The phrase national grief is Berman-esque, though municipal grief or federal grief would be even better. I was in awe of him, and like so many people today, I am crushed.

    I knew Berman’s poetry, specifically his 1999 collection Actual Air, before I knew his music, but both became deeply important to me. I think of his lines weekly, maybe daily.

    You can’t change . And of course: 

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