He attended Horace Mann School, and graduated in 1970 from Yale College, where he became friends with poets Steve Benson, Kit Robinson, Rodger Kamenetz, and Alex Smith and studied literature with A. Bartlett Giamatti and Harold Bloom and poetry with Ted Berrigan, Peter Schjeldahl, and Bill Berkson.
He continued his association with the New York School poets and the Saint Mark"s Poetry Project for several years, and moved to San Francisco in 1976, where through Benson and Robinson he met other writers—such as Rae Armantrout, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, Tom Mandel, Ted Pearson, Bob Perelman, Ron Silliman, and Barrett Watten—who would soon become known as the San Francisco Language poets. Bernheimer wrote and performed for Poets Theater, and produced and hosted the radio program of new writing by poets, "In the American Tree" on KPFA from 1979 to 1980. Since the early 1980s, Bernheimer has worked as a corporate communications executive for Bay Area technology companies.
He was a member of Manuscript Society in his senior year.
