Thirty years of Ehrhart's poetry has been selected from 12 previous collections, along with a section of older poems never before published in earlier books, culminating in a section of two dozen new poems. PUBCOMMENTS: Ehrhart has been Adastra Press' best selling author. We have published the following poetry titles by Ehrhart from 1981-1999: Matters of the Heart (1981, limited edition, out of print); The Outer Banks & Other Poems (1984, currently in its 4th printing); Winter Bells (1988, limited edition, out of print); The Distance We Travel ( 1993, currently in its 2nd printing); Mostly Nothing Happens (1996, limited edition). BACKCOVER: Welded in the fires of Vietnam, these strong, sure, memorable poems encompass "that green land/I blackened with my shadow" and love, family, and supple lyrics like "The Lotus Cutters of H Ty" and "The Way Light Bends." The clarity of vision and depth of feelings in these pages will enhance Bill Ehrhart's standing as a major voice of his generation.-Daniel Hoffman

A hunger for honesty and a charged lyricism have always made Bill Ehrhart's poetry remarkably his own. Though he's best known for his Vietnam War poems, his Beautiful Wreckage: New & Selected Poems includes many lovely poems not about Vietnam. This book deserves serious recognition.-John Balaban

Bill Ehrhart is a wonderful poet, a force of nature, a conscience that won't let us off the hook. His writing is not the fashionable embroidery that these days too often passes for poetry. There are neither ready-made emotions nor ready-made answers here, only authentic experience, transmitted indelibly by Ehrhart's craft and art. Anyone who can read this book without tears would be well-advised to go back and learn again how to read, and how to live.-Philip Appleman

W.D. Ehrhart's Beautiful Wreckage: New & Selected Poems is a moving record of how Vietnam hurt him into poetry, and into a moral vision that's as kindred with ambiguity as it is intolerant of sham. It is clear-spoken, angry, complicitous, obsessive and, finally, a long journey toward love and compassion. I'm full of admiration for his achievement.-Stephen Dunn AUTHORBIO: W. D. Ehrhart was born in 1948 and grew up in Perkasie, Pennsylvania. A U.S. Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War, he has worked as a merchant seaman, laborer, journalist, and teacher, among other occupations, and has been Visiting Professor of War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and a writer-in-residence for the National Writer's Voice Project of the YMCA of the USA. The recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts for poetry and fellowships in both poetry and prose from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, he is currently a research fellow in American Studies, University of Wales at Swansea, United Kingdom. This is his sixth title from Adastra. Ehrhart lives in Philadelphia with his wife and daughter.