William Reichard's storytelling ability is powerfully on display, especially in the final section of the book, "Crossing Over, Crossing Back: A Portrait of Marsden Hartley," a collection of 21 prose poems about which Mark Doty writes: "Reichard's homage to Hartley is a way, in these searching poems, 'to stitch the broken world back together.'" This Brightness begins and ends with lived experience and is a direct confrontation with the forces of change, hope and despair, while exploring the intricacies of an inner light that beckons people to join together.