Dear Good Naked Morning

Ruth L. Schwartz’s Dear Good Naked Morning was the winner of the 2004 Autumn House Poetry Prize. Her three previous books of poems are Edgewater (Harper Collins, 2002), selected by Jane Hirshfield as a 2001 National Poetry Series winner; Singular Bodies (Anhinga 2001), winner of the 2000 Anhinga Prize for Poetry; and Accordion Breathing and Dancing (University of Pittsburgh Press 1996), chosen by William Matthews for the 1994 Associated Writing Program Competition. She currently lives in Oakland, California where she has a private practice in Depth Hypnosis and Shamanic Counseling.

"Dear Good Naked Morning follows Adam Zagajewski’s admonishment, 'Try to praise the mutilated world.' Poem after poem here, beginning with the naked bravery of the title, caused my eyes to open wide, my breath to catch, made me shout aloud with delight at some fresh excess of insight, some dazzling flicker of truth, some spurt of living metaphor, some wild phrase of music. Here is an homage to our beautiful failures; for once, then, as another poet said—for once, then something." —Alicia Ostriker"Ruth L. Schwartz writes with consummate passion, precision, and honesty of the raw hungers that give rise to the world." —Jane Hirshfield"Ruth L. Schwartz will settle for nothing less than the essential. Her passionate poems are alive to the vulnerability of the body, the daily possibility of joy, and the deep struggle not only to make sense of, but to affirm the world." —Mark Doty