  We examine the decays of excited heavy mesons, including the leading power
corrections to the heavy quark limit. We find a new and natural explanation for
the large deviation of the width of the $D_1(2420)$ from the heavy quark
symmetry prediction. Our formalism leads to detailed predictions for the
properties of the excited bottom mesons, some of which recently have been
observed. Finally, we present a detailed analysis of the effect of power
corrections and finite meson widths on the angular distributions which may be
measured in heavy meson decays.
