Note: Verve {in} Verse is my poet-focused feature here at The Kenyon Review in which I converse with poets about their work and interests both on and off the page.
In 2013, I met poet Queens-based Jared Harél when we both read for Boundless Tales, a reading series based in Astoria, at the Waltz-Astoria, a wine bar and performance space. We spent time swapping stories about Jewish childhoods, poetry, music. While the venue has now closed, Jared and I have continued to run to each other, usually (and joyfully) at different Queens-based reading series, such as the one I organized in celebration of The Year of the Horse at the Bliss on Bliss Studio in Sunnyside, or at the REZ Reading Series in Kew Gardens, or most recently, K. C. Trommer’s Queensbound project (more on that later). Jared’s book Go Because I Love You is one of my favorite collections recently released, and it’s my great pleasure to share our conversation here with all of you. -Rosebud Ben-Oni
Rosebud Ben-Oni: At the reading back in 2014 for the Year of the Horse at Bliss on Bliss studio, I first heard you read “Go So You Can Come Back,” which is the opening poem to your most recent collection Go Because I Love You. It remains one of my most favorite of yours. Can you talk about this poem’s creation and why you chose it to open your collection?
Jared Harél: First off, thank you for this opportunity, and congrats on all your recent successes! I remember that Year of the Horse reading well, and am touched that my poem stuck with you through the years. “Go so you can come back” is a phrase my wife says when she’s feeling particularly ambitious. She’s a lawyer who bills in six-minute increments, while I often lose entire afternoons trying to work out an ideal line-break or simile. So we tend to move at different speeds. In any case, I found myself taken by the circuity of that phrase, the beauty and sadness of it. Things got rolling from there.
When I began putting my collection together, I noticed a theme of arrivals and departures in my work. My book title, Go Because I Love Youis a line from that poem, and it seems to speak to that specific emotional intersection of love and loss. The poem, “Go So You Can Come Back” felt like the right entrance point into this work. An activation of sorts.
RB: That is an incredibly clear way to put together a manuscript; I know I struggle with finding “the right entrance point,” to use your phrase, myself (and thank you for your kind words!). Poets often are curious on how other poets break up their collections into sections. Go Because I Love You is divided three sections. Can you speak on these different sections as movements toward and/or from themes or progressions?
JH: As both a reader and writer, I enjoy resting points, as well as opportunities to start up again. These continuous occasions to begin and end are one of the things I really enjoy about poems. As for my collection, the book follows a loose evolution towards becoming an adult, a parent, a father, someone others depend upon, and how scary that can be. Also, while I didn’t necessarily use a narrative progression, there are certain chronological benchmarks I adhere to. For example, poems that feature our second-born, my son, show up only in the third and final section. Otherwise, I went by feel, paying attention to how poems spoke to one another and how well they got along.
RB: The eternal concern— how will poems get along with each other, how will they speak to one another, and center and circle around different themes and influences… and speaking of influences, I’m also a Leonard Cohen fan, so I really loved your poem “You Want it Darker,” written after the title song of Cohen’s very last album. In the poem, while “the sun is still out there,/ armored and gleaming,” the speaker laments that “[t]here is nothing I can say/ to make it stop.” How has Cohen’s work informed and inspired your own?
JH: As I’m sure you remember, Cohen passed away amid the dark haze of the 2016 Presidential election, which seemed like solid timing on his part. Anyways, our new political reality and Cohen being gone tangled in my mind. The poem began as an elegy for Cohen, and America, but became a meditation on personal vs. public grief and perseverance. It’s that feeling of “yes, the world might be coming apart, but we’re also out of dish-soap and diapers and the kids want pancakes with chocolate chips inside”. As for how Cohen’s work informs my own, I’d say his songs are a constant reminder of the sanctity of language. Cohen’s lyrics are so deliberately crafted, and delivered with such purpose. It’s helpful to be reminded how much words can matter.
RB: What was the most difficult poem to write in this collection?
JH: A number of poems in this collection were tough subjects to write about, but came together rather quickly. “Veterans Day, 2014” is a good example of that. That poem explores a particular kind of guilt and luck I’d been feeling for months, yet it came together in a single afternoon. On Veterans Day, in fact. Other poems just took forever, from a craft-perspective, to get right. However, in terms of sheer time + challenging subject matter, “Answering Machine, 2003” was probably the most difficult poem to both write and get right in my collection.
I wrote “Answering Machine, 2003” for a childhood friend of mine whose mother had died quite suddenly. In the months that followed, the rest of the family neglected to change their home answering machine message, which featured the mom’s voice. This was back before cell-phones, and I remember how eerie it was hearing her bright, friendly voice slip through the line, and not being able to really reach my friend. As time passed, that answering machine began to feel like a metaphor for our friendship, his pulling away from this world, and our eventual losing touch. That poem is for him, though I doubt he’s even seen it.
RB: That is an incredible story. I hope one day that he reads the poem, and that you reconnect. I’ve been thinking of the all the ways poetry keeps us connected, even when it doesn’t, to people that filter in and out of our lives. I often think of it has a train with no last stop, only signal malfunctions, those who hold the doors during delays, sometimes not for themselves… I remember when we read together last year with a bunch of fabulous poets for Queensbound,of which you are now a member of the editorial board. Can you tell us a bit more about the project, what Queensbound is, why it’s important to the literary communities of Queens here in New York City and what its future holds?
JH: Thank you! Queensbound is the brainchild of KC Trommer, a dear friend and fellow press-mate of mine with Diode Editions (her excellent poetry collection,We Call Them Beautiful, is out now). Queensbound began as a collaborative-audio project featuring leading Queens poets writing about their neighborhoods as a way to showcase the beauty and diversity of our borough. The project launched in November 2018 with an exciting subway-ride reading (as you know), in which poets read their work on the 7-train from Vernon Blvd. Jackson Ave. to Mets-Willets Point, before making our way to a reception at The Queens Museum.
Queensbound proved to be such an uplifting and unifying project that it made sense to keep it going. I’m sure KC can talk about this in greater detail, but Queensbound now has a fiscal sponsor in Fractured Atlas and as the Queens literary community grows, we intend to put more events together and grow along with it.
RB: Speaking of community, what does community mean to you? How do you balance it with the solitary nature of writing?
JH: Community means finding people who support one another, and are willing to build something no individual could’ve created on their own. I feel very grateful to be part of the Queens literary community, and I know our borough is stronger because of what’s being built here. Like you said, writing is a pretty solitary endeavor, but bringing what’s written into the world requires other people. If you find people eager to read, listen, give honest feedback, host a reading, create a journal, fight for a cause, support a bookstore and so on, then at the end of the day, you’ve made something of value.
RB: Who are you reading now? What poets excite you?
JH: I was at AWP-Portland last month, so I’m making my way through a sizeable stack of books I bought at the conference. I have a ways to go, but I’ve been really into River Hymns by Tyree Daye, Tunsiya/Amrikaya by Leila Chatti, North American Stadiums by Grady Chambers and Fruit Geode by Alicia Jo Rabins. Other contemporary poets and collections I adore include Hard Child by Natalie Shapero, The Carrying by Ada Limón, Two Worlds Exist by Yehoshua November, Chord by Rick Barot Earth Science by Sarah Green and Neighbors by Jay Nebel. Also, while not exactly a poetry collection, Hanif Abdurraqib’s Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Questis excellent and highly recommended. Of course, I could go on.
RB: What’s next for you? What are you working on now?
JH: I’m working on a new collection of poems. My goal is to have a full-manuscript draft by Fall 2019, though that might be overly ambitious. I’ve recently started to submit my new (post-collection) poems out to the world, so that’s been exciting for me. Also, I’m a drummer and my band Flyin’ J & the Ghostrobber is recording an EP. Speaking of writing being a solitary endeavor, drumming in a rock band is a wonderful balance to that as well!