From Rosebud Ben-Oni's Verve {In} Verse: In Conversation With Jared Harél:
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
In a series of poems which interweave the domestic and daily with the political and historical, Harél surveys everything from He-Man to the Holocaust, from sleep-training his young son to struggling with the aftermath of the Presidential Election to craft a portrait of 21st-century American life that is humorous, haunting and utterly human.
Jared Harél has been awarded the ‘Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize’ from American Poetry Review, as well as the ‘William Matthews Poetry Prize’ from Asheville Poetry Review. Additionally, his poems have appeared in such journals as the Bennington Review, Massachusetts Review, The Southern Review, and Tin House. Harél teaches writing at Nassau Community College, plays drums, and lives in Queens, NY with his wife and two kids.
