Sarah Osment on David Berman ("Governors on Sominex")

Close Readings

I talked with my friend Sarah Osment about "Governors on Sominex," a poem by David Berman. In addition to being a poet, Berman was the frontman and lyricist of the band Silver Jews.

Sarah works in the Writing Program at the University of Chicago, where she teaches courses in Media Aesthetics. She has devoted her intellectual energy to more public-facing projects since earning her PhD in English from Brown University in 2016: she is the co-founder of Hyped on Melancholy, an online magazine devoted to smart words about sad songs and the reasons we cleave to them. Sarah's own essay for Hyped—on Wilson Phillips's "Hold On" and much else besides—is here. She is also co-editor, along with David Hering, of a recent cluster of essays on the poetry and music of David Berman published at Post45.

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