To read "The Hive" called a "small masterpiece" and "a well-wrought, bittersweet poem that skillfully weaves its metaphor through several fascinating pages." ______ To read a review of The White Bridge in this issue. ______ The White Bridge is published by Poetry Harbor, P.O.Box 103, Duluth MN 55801-0103 The book is paperback, $5.95 plus shipping and handling. ISBN# is 1-886895-17-1

The White Bridge by Francine Sterle Comment upon The White Bridge: A comet whose fading tail is as "luminous as fishline," a flower that rises out of the stubborn "green thumbs of weeds," a woman who is miraculously transformed into the ghostly body of an owl. There is much magic and sensuality at work in the deeply felt, beautifully realized poems of Francine Sterle's The White Bridge. With grace and clarity, she sifts through the "unsorted material" of our daily lives to reveal what is truly essential, "what doesn't get erased," that solid, hard-won ground beneath us all. Possessing a subtlety of mind and an implacable heart, Sterle takes us on a journey through the worlds of memory and desire, dream and reality, and in the process shows us, in poems full of compassion and lyric conviction, the sure and "intricate dance home." —Robert Hedin Her work glows with a steady pulse and it is that pulse that takes you from the first line and pulls you to the end of the poem...Her love poem "The Hive," a love song thick with honey and bees as metaphors is a small masterpiece...The pace is like a bee nuzzling pollen in the center of rose. ..Sterle is sexy and wild, intelligent, even wise; she is purposeful and the work is skillfully rendered. The poems resonate. —Helen Ruggieri writing for Small Press Review Francine Sterle is a gifted writer and a versatile poet with a vivid vision of the world. —Kyle E. Elle writing for Budgeteer News The White Bridge, a fourty-four page chapbook, is Francine Sterle's first poetry collection. A native of Minnesota, she holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from Warren Wilson College and has studied writing in a variety of settings, including Oxford University in Oxford, England, the Spoleto Writers' Workshop in Spoleto, Italy, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Awards include a Lake Superior Contemporary Writers Award, a Loft-McKnight Foundation Award, a Pushcart Prize nomination, a residency fellowship from the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, as well as both a Fellowship Grant and a Career Opportunity Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Her poems have been published in such literary journals as The North American Review, Nimrod, CutBank, Atlanta Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Zone 3, and many others. Francine has also taught workshops and classes in venues ranging from The Depot to the Range Mental Health Center to the University of Minnesota. She currently resides in the tiny Iron Range town of Cherry, Minnesota. She just won the Editor's Prize from Tupelo Press and will have a book forthcoming in 2001 which will include poems from The White Bridge The White Bridge is published by Poetry Harbor P.O.Box 103 Duluth MN 55801-0103 Paper $5.95 plus shipping and handling. ISBN# 1-886895-17-1