The River of Heaven was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and won the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Indeed, the poems were well received by the critical establishment and established Hongo as an important voice in Asian American poetry. Robert Schultz, writing in the Hudson Review, notes that Hongo's poems show “care to those excluded from whatever the American Dream has become in the 1980s.”

Hongo's rich and versatile style has been especially noted by critics. Schultz comments that his “rich vocabulary and undulant syntax hold his stories of loss and remembrance in a secure, distinctive music.” A reviewer for Publishers Weekly states that Hongo skillfully uses language that “ranges from the lyric and elegant to the earthy and everyday” and that the “poet's song is built on a keen sense of history and purpose.” Fred Muratori, writing in Library...