Jean Valentine: This is a work of spiritual intelligence, rueful, loving, ecstatic: an everyman sings here of God, lover, nature, all one and shapeshifting, and sings at times with the simple beauty of the best southwestern country music.

In an early poem in Chard deNiord's Sharp Golden Thorn he writes, "I was the man in the fire that is his beloved." Spoken from an abyss so universal and finally, so mythical, that their considerable risks become irrelevant, these poems truly negotiate the boundaries between our minds and our bodies; between our spiritual and skeptical selves; between the myth and its maker, the lover and the beloved: —between the many singers and the single singed heart. To return from such a place is no small task. To be able to write about it is no small gift. This is a remarkable book. —Jane Mead

On Asleep in the Fire:

"[It is] a brilliant first collection of poems. The language is everywhere fresh and bright, the words themselves like pebbles in a clear brook. The poet himself comes wonderfully to life in a voice with deep spiritual resonance." —Jay Parini

Chard deNiord is the author of Asleep in the Fire. He is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Providence College and directs the New England College MFA Program in poetry. He lives in Putney, Vermont.