The White Bird

Readers can open any page in this book at random and realize that William Bernhardt is a poet of the rarest kind--one who can communicate grace, illumination, and shared experience without the obscurity and obfuscation that sometimes causes people to avoid modern poetry. His everyman approach and direct language draws in readers who might normally never give a poem second glance. Drawing inspiration from forebears such as Billy Collins and Robert Frost, Bernhardt creates a unique voice that is at once accessible and profound. Bernhardt's poems show how the everlasting themes--parenting, severed relationships, loneliness, loss, and love--are all an essential part of membership in community of humanity. With the turn of a phrase, Bernhardt's versatile and often playful poems can move you, thrill you, or make you laugh out loud. Smart, lyrical, observant, and textured, these poems confirm, as American Book Award-winner Rilla Askew wrote, that Bernhardt is "a compelling new voice in American poetry." William Bernhardt is the author of over forty books, and also teaches writing through the Red Sneaker Writing Center.