Let Our Bodies Change the Subject

Finalist for the 2023 National Jewish Book Award Finalist for the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize Let Our Bodies Change the Subject is a poetry collection that dives headlong into the terrifying, wondrous, sleep-deprived existence of being a parent in twenty-first-century America. In clear, dynamic verses that disarm then strike, Jared Harl investigates our days through the keyhole of domesticity, through personal lyrics and cultural reckonings. Whether taking a family trip to Coney Island or simply showing his son snowflakes on Inauguration morning, Harl guides us toward moments of intimacy and understanding, humor and grief. I will try, he admits, to be better than myself, which is all/Ive ever wanted and everything I need. Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, Let Our Bodies Change the Subject is a secular prayer. Hoping against hope, Harl works to reconcile feelings of luck and loss, of living for joy while fearing the worst.