HeyJaredMy Faraway Near One: Love Letters to Poets
Love letters to poets twice a month, plus invitations to support your own creative reading and writing practices.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 6
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- Sep 28, 2026
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- Jul 13, 2026
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Love Letter to Kim Addonizio (opens the original)
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Dear Kim Addonizio, My Faraway Near One,I agree with you when you said, “Let’s skip [the small talk] and get straight to the rabid dog at hand.” So that is what I am going to do. My estranged, mentally ill father died. The funeral home director tracked me down this past week, and I managed to dig deep into a well of compassion (that I am not sure really belongs to me) to sign the cremation papers and organize a burial. I am thinking about the title of one of your books—What is This Thing Called
Love Letter to Nick Flynn (opens the original)
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Dear Nick Flynn, My Faraway Near One,I am trying to understand why I tend to read you when I am high in the sky—over the Atlantic Ocean, above the Smoky Mountains, on top of the web of coastline along the Eastern Shore. I read Low on my way to a remote island for a poetry retreat as my beloved stepfather was being eaten up by cancer (that fucking carnivore of a disease). I read <em
Late Summer Reading Ritual: Book-making (opens the original)
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For over four decades, first as a student, then as a teacher and school leader, mid to late August marked the start of a new school year for me. In honor of this time of excitement and anticipation about the new books and authors I encounter in the new school year, I have begun a new ritual—book-making. For the second year in a row, I went to Backyard Art Camp in the Berkshires with Suzi Banks Baum. Last year I did the short four day skill-building camp. This year I went for the seven day intens
Love Letter to Mary Oliver (opens the original)
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Dear Mary, My Faraway Near One,I have been reading you for 30 years now, and I am grateful you left us here with so much of your writing—over 30 collections of poetry and prose. You may have been my first poet I read outside of an assigned class. Since then, I have given you to others and others have given you to me at key transitions in my life—anniversaries, job transitions, deaths. My top five favorites are: Dream Work, A Thousand Mornings, Thirst, Felicity, The Leaf and the Cloud. Being amon
Love Letter to Yaron Lifschitz and the Circa Ensemble (opens the original)
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Dear Yaron Lifschitz and the Circa Ensemble, My Faraway Near Ones,I am struggling with words—reading them and writing them—these summer days. For some people, summer is the time to read more. For me, I have been reading less. I can’t settle into my body long enough to sit with a book. So, yesterday I took my self and a picnic lunch to a nearby dance festival where I discovered you.Watching your performance of Wolf at the Jacob’s
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