David Berman - Composition, Horseshit, Magic

David Berman - Composition, Horseshit, MagicDavid Berman may be gone, but it’s always good to hear his voice. And that’s pretty much all you’ll hear on Composition, Horseshit, Magic. This new-to-me unofficial cassette popped up in my feed recently — and now it’s popping up in your feed. Hello! What we’ve got here is an audience tape of a rare poetry reading DCB gave at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on September 28, 2002. As James Tate notes in his intro, Berman had graduated from U-Mass with a master’s in poetry a few years back. For his triumphant return, the Silver Jew reads several new poems (he claims to have written them just weeks prior) that are filled with all the stuff we love: surreal childhood remembrances, strikingly detailed imagery, hilarious/sad punchlines. Composition, horseshit, magic? Maybe. You can find some of these poems floating around on the ‘net, but it makes me wonder why there hasn’t yet been a big volume that collects the complete writings of David…