Almost Naked

Hadley Hury's poetry examines our growth into maturity with tough wit and expansive spirit, exploring the seasons and variety of the natural world and of human love, and the universal anatomies of vulnerability, loss, humor, and hope-finding the joy in growing into our more genuine selves, of becoming more comfortable in wearing our inside selves on the outside. As the title poem of the collection puts it, ..".more and more we learn to take things off, to undress ourselves-more disposed to meet, almost naked, the darkness and the day." These poems celebrate human relationship and a vital intimacy with nature and urgently suggest that the act of focusing, of paying attention, is always the first step to redemptive acts of living and of love. Hury's poems invite readers to the frontiers of their own imagination, to the edge of what they know, asks them first to stop for a moment and appreciate, and then to explore further.