Waking - Softcover

Ron Rash, author of nine books of fiction and poetry, is the winner of the 2010 Frank O' Connor Award, the world's foremost prize for a short-story collection. Serena, his most recent novel, was on dozens of lists - including those of Publishers Weekly and the New York Times - of the best books of 2008. Rash lives in Clemson, South Carolina.

"Long live Ron Rash the storyteller, but here's the news. Ron Rash the poet is back and giving us poems that are both the river stones and the water making them shine. if allowed only two words for this wonderful poet, they would have to be clear and lithe." --Bob Hicok, author of Animal Soul, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award

"Ron Rash's Waking is a book of place, named and unnamed, the natural world, of 'mud daubers and dust motes' as well as 'stars awake in their wide pasture.' Many of the poems originate in the 'blood-memory' of shared and personal histories, and gathered here they become 'as near and known as your outstretched hand' - each poem 'aught-light' the lyric encapsulation of story, precisely and lovingly rendered. Waking is wise and beautiful." --Claudia Emerson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Late Wife and Figure Studies --Claudia Emerson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Late Wife and Figure Studies

"Ron Rash's Waking welcomes us into a world where memories, like crystalline water, come 'slow and clear' yet where the past - though vividly apprehended - remains 'all beyond your reach.' He writes of the Welsh and Scots who came to Appalachia, to settle near Blowing Rock in 'Dismal,' North Carolina. He writes of their descendents - their labor, their hardships, their sense of community and beauty, their meanness and kindness. Reading these lovely poems, I think of some lines by William Carlos Williams: 'A world lost,/a world unsuspected,/beckons to new places...'" --Ann Fisher-Wirth, author of Carta Marina and Five Terraces