HeyJaredPoetry & Theology
This substack tracks my incredibly scintillating thoughts on poetry and theology (yawn).
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 9
- Latest publication
- Sep 30, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 3, 2026
Latest issues
Because..., a Poem (opens the original)
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Over the last couple of weeks, a poet acquaintance and I have been engaged in a SubStack comment exchange about the relative value and merits of fixed form poems (accentual-syllabic verse poems) and open form poems (conversational prose poems). What has been delightful for me has been the tone of the exchange. I truly hope one day our paths will cross and that it occurs north of the 49th parallel, as I relish every opportunity to travel in the country of my first home and nationality.What proved
Poetry, the Yuck Factor, & a Better World (opens the original)
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“Poetry…allows us to articulate our deepest emotions.…” (pulled out of context from John Franklin’s SubStack post, “On Poetry”)Most of John Franklin’s micro essay, “On Poetry,” I rolled with and through, thumbs up. But what often pushes my button in discussions of poetry is the facile pairing of poem-making and “our deepest emotions”—which happened to me in Franklin’s opening paragraph. Or when, reading a poem, I come across such words as “tears” or “smile.” Too frequently they feel like yucky s
Poems: fixed form and open form (opens the original)
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What’s obvious and, I’d say, very good is that English language poems (broad brush here) come in two types. Some are written with a will to conform to the fixed forms handed down from wherever, whenever, by whomever; some are written with a will to improvise, unconstrained by the fixity of the “traditional” forms, into what may be called open forms. Whether in a fixed form or an open form, poets worth their salt write toward excellence—with a will to contribute positively to their readers’ human
Poems Like Hand Grenades (opens the original)
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In high school, mid-Vietnam, with LA and Philly burning, Nixon in office, I, fuming, scribbled on a piece of notebook paper, If it doesn’t explode, poetry is useless, and called it a poem. Then, completely drawn off of the miserable world, I puzzled for hours (how you know you may be a poet) whether what I’d written should be a monostitch (an SAT word, for sure) or a couplet.This morning, after a fiery orange sunrise and quick read of dismal headlines, I was fuming again, wondering whether, deca
Fun with Cliche Questions (opens the original)
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What’s up?I suspect you’ve heard that question countless times, usually from a friend you haven’t seen in a while. And likely you’ve used it, too.Thanks for reading Poetry & Theology! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.<div class="fake-input-wrapper
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