The World Behind the World

Balancing emotional openness with formal restraint, April Bernard proves once again a poet who 'harmonizes the raucous and the classic, the songful and the wry, the courtly and the quick' (Wayne Koestenbaum). Throughout her sixth collection, Bernard searches for 'the world behind the world,' a spiritual realm of justice and peace, music and grace. The host of saints present in this parallel world includes poets--John Ashbery, Thomas Wyatt, Gerard Manley Hopkins--as well as folklore spirits, animals wildand domestic, and personal ghosts--