Echolalia

The language and cadence–fractured, whizzing–of our most wired new century lives in [her poems] though Bernhardt’s subjects are ancient: love and family, ache and hope, remorse and grief worked out in memory and right now, that dazzling look-at-this. And I did. I kept coming back to look at and through these poems, both solaced and unnerved by their energy and wit and darkness, their patience–even given their great restlessness–the meticulous care in which they were made, the ghosts of Bishop, Dickinson, Cummings, Hopkins here by name and spirit, how be they transformed, flooded, rekindled, all so oddly cherished. Welcome this poet, this very original eye and ear and heart. –Marianne Boruch