January 2024

Caesura Presents…Jared Harél

Jared Harél is the author, most recently, of Let Our Bodies Change the Subject, which was selected by Kwame Dawes as the Winner of the 2022 Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2023). He’s also been awarded the ‘Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize’ from American Poetry Review, as well as the ‘William Matthews Poetry Prize’ from Asheville Poetry Review. Jared’s poems have recently appeared in such journals as 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, The Southern Review and The Sun. He teaches writing, plays drums, and lives in Westchester, NY with his wife and two kids. 

Website: jaredharel.com  

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jared.harel 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaredharel/ 

“A Piece Worth Saving”

John:

Jared, thank you so much for joining me. I’ve read Let Our Bodies Change the Subject twice now in a month…that’s how rich and emotionally complex it is. And I can see how it won the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Prize in Poetry.

Though I have so many questions I’m excited to ask, I wanted to start with one of the most genuine thoughts I’ve read in a long time. From the poem “Self-Portrait as Nature Preserve:”

To believe       at least a piece of me
is worth saving            I slow plod

over twigs       leaves         weave prints
where my body             goes and god

willing will return

The deeply human desperation here just feels so true. Can you break the emotions and personal truths in these lines down for me? And can you also tell me about how you approach such open-hearted vulnerability in your work?

Jared:

Thanks so much for this, and for spending time with my collection. I’m really pleased to hear that the book is working for you and has rewarded multiple reads.

With regard to “Self-Portrait as Nature Preserve,” those opening lines began to form in my mind while hiking a nature preserve in upstate New York. The word “preserve” kept hooking inside me – what we deem worthy of protecting and safeguarding in this world, and of ourselves – and I began to fall into a “slow plod” rhythm with these thoughts. I should mention that I wrote this poem during the depths of Covid and lockdown restrictions. Living in Queens, NY, a nature preserve was one of the very few places we could still move freely, breathe deeply and feel somewhat at peace. At a certain point, the poem began to literalize the phrase “one with nature” in a way that interested and haunted me, and I followed my ear from there.

With regard to your larger question about vulnerability, I don’t think I have something so tangible as an “approach” to this, but it is absolutely what I’m searching for in my work—that shock of raw recognition. The emotional gut-punch of saying something true. Until I find that in a free-write or poem-draft or whatever, I’m really just digging around and searching for it. Lastly, I’ll add that raising children has forced me to adapt into a more vulnerable and open-hearted human, which perhaps comes across in my poems as well.

 John:

Thanks so much for the deeply felt response. I really grapped onto “that shock of raw recognition.” I love that phrase, and indeed it is absolutely what I’m looking for in my (and other’s) work. Your poems are layered in such deeply felt, utterly human “shocks.” Here are a few that really stand out in this respect:

Our daughter is killing villagers again.

What lives inside the body
sleeps there too

Each day, fresh evidence
of how thoroughly
I will vanish

My wife stares through me

And these are all first lines! Wow.

So, how does your process for starting a poem look like? Do you start with a clear, visceral image in mind or a larger idea? An emotion, theme, or experience? And what are your thoughts on the importance of stark, potent first lines?

Jared:

I don’t really have one set way of starting a new poem. “Sad Rollercoaster,” for instance, was the culmination of an entire summer in which my daughter, question by incisive question, came to understand death in her own way. I wrote “The Sweet Spot” in twenty minutes one weekday morning after racing to get my kids on the bus. “The Other Side of Desire,” was prompted by that opening phrase you referred to that popped into my head one evening: “What lives inside the body/sleeps there too”. “All I’ve Ever Wanted” began as a prompt by Rosebud Ben-Oni to write a poem that “reimagines discovery.” I find that good writing usually follows good reading, and a number of the poems in my collection are inspired by, or are in conversation with other writers I admire. “As Plagues Go” was inspired by reading Natalie Shapero’s brilliant collection, Hard Child, and my trying to match her cutting, sardonic, casual, yet somehow elevated poetic tone. “Overnight” was informed by the Nikki Giovanni’s descending stanza structure in her powerhouse poem, “Allowables.” I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m not choosy. Writing a good poem is hard to do and so I try to be resourceful and grasp inspiration from everywhere and anywhere I can find it.

That being said, I have a pretty high bar for what I want my opening lines to do. My favorite opening lines don’t only pull the reader in, but establish a unique point of view and specificity of feeling. I know! No sweat, right?

John:

That answer definitely speaks to the organic movements of your poems. Speaking of things being organic, by which I also mean authentic and flushed out, you approach explorations of parenting in unique ways that feel vulnerable and true. As a parent to twins myself, I’m constantly walking that tightrope of impossibly pure love and anxiety, of hope and fear for their futures (personal and societal). And, unlike many poets who simply praise parenting, your work really delves into how dymanic our familial relationships are. How has both your personal perspective and poetic themes changed since becoming a parent? Have your poems roughened around the edges, mirroring the tumult and uncertainty of fatherhood? Has the heart of your work expanded?

Jared:

Yes, I can definitely relate to that exact tightrope of “impossibly pure love and anxiety.” Becoming a parent has made the world both a brighter and scarier place for me, and I think one of the big themes in my collection is that impulse to live for joy while simultaneously being haunted by the past and terrified for our future. And how to raise children in such a world? Probably because of those preoccupations, my kids show up quite often in my poems, to their tremendous delight, I should add! We’ll see if that delight continues into their teenage years.

Anyways – coming back to that word organic – I do feel like my kids (as well as my parents, grandparents, spouse, and sometimes siblings) work their way into my poems pretty organically, and that if I’m interested in writing poems from a place of honesty, and from my own genuine and unique perspective, then it’s almost impossible for my kids not to be present in the poems I write. It’d take a great effort to remove them from my work. I half-joke that my kids are both my biggest inspiration and biggest obsctacle when it comes to writing poems.

Stylistically, I do think the heart of my work has expanded since becoming a father. Caretaking requires growth and change for most of us, and I find that stylistic evolutions and personal transformation are key ingredients for poem-making. Many of my poems that I think are successful arose out of transitions and risk-taking and a sense of discovery. And sure, it can be easy to romanticize the work of caretaking by glossing over the daily minutae of it, the moments of frustration or boredom, those days you want to just hand them their iPads, an entire box of Oreos, and run the hell away! If anything, I try to include those very moments in my writing, the complexities and mixed feelings; the specificity and messiness of life.

John:

I absolutely understand the intimate way you discuss the expansion of your work. So utterly true.

Given the consistency of Let Our Bodies Change the Subject, I was wondering how you went about working on this book. Did you set out with certain themes, emotions, images, and ideas to create such a cohesive collection or did you simply write and write and find common themes later? In short, how did this collection take shape?

Jared:

With a few exceptions, the fifty poems that make up Let Our Bodies Change the Subject were written between 2018-2022, which probably helps when it comes to stylistic and thematic consistency. Otherwise, I write poems one at a time without worrying too much about thematic cohesion. But I do revise as a collective. By that I mean I take all the poems I’ve completed and don’t hate and paste them into a single Word Doc. Then, when I feel like I’m in the right headspace to revise, I open that document and rework poem after poem, one after another. If I’m in a good groove, I can revise a dozen poems in a day. This process might offer the collection that more consistent and unified feel you’re referring to.

Eventually, when I think I’ve written enough strong poems, I begin to give shape to that big Word doc, cutting some poems, revising others, bringing together poems that speak to one another in interesting or complicated ways. At this point in the process, I do start writing into the gaps of the book. For example, I felt the first draft of Let Our Bodies Change the Subject needed more poems with my wife in it. I certainly didn’t want to give readers the impression that I was parenting alone, which couldn’t be farther from the truth. So I gave myself the assignment to write more poems that featured her. In that sense, I spent more time working on the collection as a whole the further along I dug into the book.

John:

Sounds quite a bit like my process. And it’s interesting how you went about ensuring readers recognized the balanced in your home life. I often fall into the habit of writing about my kids, my fears for them, the lessons I (likely fail to) impact from a wholly personal place. I appreciate that you consider the reader’s potential misinterpretation that you’re a single parent.

Moving past family and parenting, I’d love to ask about the occasional undertones of culture and politics in your work. Generally, such explorations bubble beneath the surface of your main themes, but pieces like “Takeaways” push them to the foreground. How do you weave such often subtle national themes into work that’s predominatly deeply personal?

Jared:

I tend to write about the political through the lens of the personal, which provides me with the specificity and perspective necessary to write a poem that is hopefully fresh and interesting. I need to get small to write about something big. To quote Lucille Clifton, I try to “come to poetry not out of what (I) know, but out of wonder.” Whenever I’ve set out to write a “Political Poem” it’s always felt too forced and agenda-driven to bear its own weight. Yet the larger world is omnipresent, now more than ever – we all have access to an endless deluge of news cycles and breaking news in the palm of our hands – and so issues of gun-violence, war, elections and so forth weigh heavily on my mind and get woven into my work.

John:

Great quote, and you do bring a lot of wonder to your work. You imbue the little things in life with, well, almost a life of their own. And there’s another incredibly apt line from Czeslaw Milosz that Dorianne Laux quotes in her endorsement of Let Our Bodies Change the Subject: “compassion for others entangled in the flesh.” Could we as poets ask for anything more than “wonder” and “compassion”?

Jared, thank you so much for delving so deeply into your creative process with me. To end our conversation, I’d love to know what you’re working on now and what we might expect from you over the coming few years!

Jared:

Thank you, John! It’s been a pleasure talking poetry with you. I’ve been doing a bunch of readings and events in support of Let Our Bodies Change the Subject, so that collection is still very much in the front of my mind, but it’s been fun writing new work without expectation or design. I’m back to the start of my creative process: filling that big Word Doc with new poems. Trying to pay attention and be present, take creative risks, listen and read. I often return to Carrie Fountain’s words, that “writing is the act of not giving away your attention, but keeping that attention with you, where you are.” I love how her definition for writing has nothing to do with actually getting words on a page, but being aware and awake in your own life, and trusting that if you do that, the poems will come.

Read the Poems Jared is Presenting Here!