Let Our Bodies Change the Subject (The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry)

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 Harél 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, Harél guides us toward moments of intimacy and understanding, humor and grief.

“I will try,” he admits, “to be better than myself, which is all/I’ve 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, Harél works to reconcile feelings of luck and loss, of living for joy while fearing the worst.

Jared Harél is the author of Go Because I Love You. He has been awarded the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from American Poetry Review and the William Matthews Poetry Prize from Asheville Poetry Review. His poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, New Ohio Review, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, the Southern Review, and The Sun. Harél teaches writing, plays drums, and lives in Westchester, New York, with his wife and two children.