Can't Be Far

In his poetry collection Can't Be Far, Jed Myers writes with masterfully restrained music and luminous imagery as he questions how to survive the losses and griefs that haunt us all-the aging body, the deaths of family and friends, and a world of tyranny and violence so distorted by "the makers of our new facts" that we barely recognize it. Guiding us through the dark, Myers, who claims to be "Late // for my remedial lessons in gentle," helps us "untie beauty // from horror" in this "muffled chorus" of "hundreds on hundreds / of hunkered souls," while paving the way toward "love's presence," and therefore love's courage, that surely Can't Be Far.

-Jill McCabe Johnson, author of Learning to Spar and Tangled in Vow & Beseech

"Trouble's Voice" gives as good as it gets in Jed Myers' newest collection, Can't Be Far. In shapely, attentive, sure-footed stanzas, a subtle music emerges, alternately tender and fierce, the hymnal-and-blues of "all human churn." Part Wordsworth, part Whitman, part Grace Slick, Myers grapples with family history and political disaster in equal measure. Can't Be Far is at root a reckoning, chapter and verse, with the twists and turns and unshakeable ghosts a long life conjures. If joy is the finest thing we can make of our trouble, Myers has given us an earful. Reader, rejoice.

-Kevin Craft, author of Traverse

Can't Be Far is part memory, part prayer, part biblical allusion, part news report, part history, part eulogy, part road trip, part slow dance across the universe. The stars might show an "immense lack of tenderness," but Myers never falters as he resurrects "the golden expanse / of forsaken instants we didn't note." From the amusements of childhood to the rubble of destruction, these poems invite us into his twitching, kicking, shimmering world-buckle up and enjoy the ride..

-Jane Medved, author of Wayfarers and Deep Calls To Deep