Renée Ashley's third collection, The Revisionist's Dream, was published by Avocet Press Inc (2001). Her other books include The Various Reasons of Light (Avocet) and Salt (Brittingham Prize in Poetry, University of Wisconsin Press). Her novel, Someplace Like This, will be published in July 2003. She has been the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, the Charles Angoff Award from The Literary Review, and both the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Excellence for Emerging Writers and their Award for Literary Excellence. She has received Fellowships in both poetry and prose from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts – most recently a 2003 Fellowship in Poetry – as well as a Fellowship in Poetry from the NEA. She served for six years as the Assistant Poetry Coordinator for the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and is currently on the faculty of Fairleigh Dickinson University's low-residency M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing.

The poems in this chapbook are from a completed manuscript, Basic Heart.