"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."

 

—Jean Valentine 

 

"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

 

 "Here is a heavy book, a voice from a walled garden, the meditation of one wrestling with knowlege and ignorance, the end product of a long and rigorous alchemy."

 

—Li-Young Lee

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