Air

Daniel Halpern's Air seeks to confront, understand, and intermingle with the world, exploring solitude, memory, and the pleasures of being human.

Cinematic, nostalgic, and unabashedly raw, Daniel Halpern's tenth collection, Air, hungers for the entirety of human experience. A mythic quotidian is recounted through rich and often confessional exposition: the love of a father for his daughter, of dear people and places, of curious insects and birds. Musing unapologetically on themes intimate and wistful, Halpern writes to French actresses, old lovers, a pot of stew, insomnia, and to friends past and present, sharing lessons of the literary world. As he reminisces on once-realities and questions his own observations—the duplicity of memory—these poems transcend form, the world presenting itself anew. Halpern is a literary icon, and in Air he proves that poetry is quite literally all around us.