Think of Me as a Place: Remembering David Berman

A friend texted me the news of David Berman’s death last night. I went straight to my bookshelf and pulled out my copy of Actual Air, published by Open City Books in 1999.

This particular book of poems has been traveling around with me for two decades, from Chicago to Texas to Iowa to New York, from shelf to shelf, from high school to middle-age employment. Though I keep it on a bookshelf in my living room (for all visiting eyes to see), when I returned to it last night, I felt a slight sense of shame for neglecting its pages for so long, and for the fact that only now, at Berman's passing, was it back in my hands.

I flipped to the poem Classic Water, which I had youthfully dog-eared, though it is the second poem in the book:

I remember Kitty saying we shared a deep longing for

the consolation prize, laughing as we rinsed the stagecoach. 

I remember the night we camped out

     and I heard her whisper

"think of me as a place" from her sleeping bag

     with the centaur print.

I remember being in her father's basement workshop

when we picked up an unknown man sobbing

over the shortwave radio . . .

I followed Berman's list of remembrances to the turn at the end of the poem—it still makes the edges of my mouth tilt up! 

Sometimes I'm awakened in the middle of the night

by the clatter of a room service cart and I think back on Kitty.

Those summer evenings by the government lake,

talking about the paradox of multiple Santas

or how it felt to have your heart broken. 

I still get a hollow feeling on Labor Day when the summer ends

And so the poem goes on to reveal the speaker's regret and, in truth, their stronger feelings for Kitty. 

I was a teenager when I first read this poem again and again, and I remember thinking Berman's memories were what I had to look forward to—and oh, did I search for them and welcome them! Now that I’ve moved through my youth, Kitty and the speaker have become old friends, a pleasant fuzzy memory—was I there with them or rather, were they there with me; through my growing up, they have become a place to go back to. 

Berman's ability to maintain sincerity, read after read and year after year, is unique and, in my opinion, well-deserving of your eyes.

The New York Public Library has several copies of Actual Air in its collection. Have a copy sent to your local NYPL branch or come into the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building’s Rose Main Reading Room to read, over and over again, Classic Water in its entirety, as well as the 38 other beauties in Berman's collection.