Reviewed by William Bernhardt Though many contemporary poets pen wonderful work, this is not an age characterized by innovation. The free verse/blank verse modern poem looks much the same from one page to the next. Consequently, when a couple of artists jointly produce something genuinely innovative, we should all sit up and notice. This is just […]
November Read of the Month: “Don’t Try,” by Nathan Brown and Jon Dee Graham
November 2, 2016 by Leave a Comment
August Read of the Month: “Punch,” by Ray McManus
August 3, 2016 by 2 Comments
Reviewed by William Bernhardt I should have seen it coming. The book opens with an epigraph from Philip Levine that provides fair warning: “You’ve never done something simple, so obvious…because you don’t know what work is.” That quote is a clear indicator of the informative and enlightening pleasures to be found in Ray McManus’s fascinating […]
December Read of the Month: “Want v. Need: Stories from Pottawatomie County,” by Amy Susan Wilson
December 3, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by William Bernhardt Just when the cynics begin to wonder if the short story as a literary form is lost, moribund, or permanently encased in amber, Third Lung Press presents a collection that reminds us how rich, how enriching, and how truly American this form is. Want v. Need: Stories from Pottawatomie County is […]
November Read of the Month: “The White Bird,” by William Bernhardt
November 4, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Amy Susan Wilson Entering William Bernhardt’s debut poetry collection, The White Bird, is entering into the heart of human community. Always rich, often humorous, and at times poignant, these poems, which are diverse in style, guide us through the maze of parenting, longing, loss, working, traveling, and, among other things, falling in and […]