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Jared Smith is a prominent figure in contemporary poetry, technology research, and professional continuing education. Having earned his BA cum laude and his MA in English and American Literature from New York University, he spent many years in industry and research. Starting in 1976, he rose to Vice President of The Energy Bureau, Inc. in New York; relocated to Illinois, where he became Associate Director of both Education and Research for an international not-for-profit research laboratory (IGT); advised several White House Commissions on technology and policy under the Clinton Administration; and left industry in 2001, after serving as Special Appointee to Argonne National Laboratory.

Jared’s seventh volume of poetry, The Graves Grow Bigger Between Generations, was released by Higganum Hill Books in the spring of 2008. His previous six critically acclaimed volumes include: Where Images Become Imbued With Time (Puddin’head Press, Chicago, 2007); Lake Michigan And Other Poems (Puddin’head Press, Chicago, 2005); Walking The Perimeters Of The Plate Glass Window Factory (Birch Brook Press, New York, 2001); Keeping The Outlaw Alive (Erie Street Press, Chicago, 1988); Dark Wing (Charred Norton Publishing, New York, 1984); and Song Of The Blood: An EpicSeven Minutes Before The Bombs Drop (The Smith Press, New York, 1983). His first CD, , was released by Artvilla Records in 2006, with original music performed by David Michael Jackson and Andy Derryberry. His second CD, Controlled By Ghosts, was released by Practical Music Studio in combination with CD Baby in October 07, with music by alternative jazz composer Lem Roby. Both CDs can be downloaded in whole or in part via any digital download service worldwide.

Jared has had hundreds of publications in literary journals across the nation over the past 30 years, in addition to several foreign countries. He has published reviews of the works of such major contemporary poets as Ted Kooser, C.K. Williams, and W.S. Merwin, as well as several craft interviews, including one with Ted Kooser that was translated into Chinese for republication in Taiwan and Mainland China. Jared’s work has also been adapted to stage in both New York and Chicago.

Jared Smith’s poems, essays, and literary commentary have appeared in The New York Quarterly, Confrontation, Spoon River Quarterly, Kenyon Review, Bitter Oleander, Small Press Review, Greenfield Review, Vagabond, The Smith, Home Planet News, Bitterroot, Rhino, Ibbetson Street Press, Wilderness House Review, After Hours, Poet Lore, The Pedestal, Second Coming, The Partisan Review, Somerville News, Coe Review, U.T. Review, The Iconoclast, Trail & Timberline, and many others. He has also been on National Public Radio and Pacifica. He has given readings, workshops, and classes at colleges, schools, libraries, and coffee houses around the country.

While at NYU, Jared studied under poet/critic M.L. Rosenthal, Library of Congress Adviser Robert Hazel, and founder of The New York Quarterly William Packard. He has served as a member of the Screening Committee and on the Board of Directors of The New York Quarterly under founding Editor William Packard, as well as being a current member of its Advisory Board under Raymond Hammond; as coordinator of readings at two Greenwich Village coffee shops in the 70s; as a Guest Columnist for Poets magazine and Home Planet News under Editor Don Lev; as Guest Poetry Editor for two issues of The Pedestal under Editor John Amen; and as Poetry Editor of Trail & Timberline.

Jared Smith is a member of Colorado Poets Center, The Colorado Poets Association, The Academy of American Poets, Illinois State Poetry Society, and The Chicago Poets’ Club, and past President of Poets & Patrons in Chicago. He is listed in Marquis Who’s Who In America, among other reference works, and has been listed among the authors in Poets & Writers Directory since its inception.

Where Images Become Imbued With Time

Jared Smith
Puddin’head Press, Chicago, 2007. ISBN# 978-0-9724339-6-9. Softcover

“He’s often been compared to Whitman, but here, where he pays his respects at our collective graves, he puts me more in mind of Blake–not the young one of the Songs, but the darker Blake of the visionary prophecies. I would call this a sad book, but that would not account for how joyous it feels to be reminded that every inch of earth we walk is a sacred bone-heap, and this is now true of our highways and dams and bridges. His elegy grows stronger, more urgent…I’d call him a prophet of doom if it were not for the love that simply aches in every line.” –Diana Hume George

“I like your I-witness of the Song in our blood…it’s a pleasure.” –Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“…utterly original and as solid an any poetry that’s being written today. It has a firm grasp of form, it has its own unique music in line after line of low-key symbolist imagery, and it is also austerely disrespectful of all the right things. I like this poetry a lot.” –William Packard

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15 EURO incl. shipment world-wide.

The Graves Grow Bigger Between Generations

Jared Smith
(in-press, with a release date of May 1st, 08) Higganum Hill Books, Higganum, CT, 2008. ISBN 13: 978-0-9776556-8-7 Softcover

“Jared Smith’s work deals with the Here and Now, yes, but is so involved with All-Time /All-Culture that, if you don’t keep totally focused, at times you’re liable to step over the connections. Smith is a kind of Cro - Magnon - Neanderthal - Indus Valley - Mesopotamian - Tiawanaku Combo - Man watching the late news, buzzarding over the contemporary world and seeing its miserable negativity…but ultimately always referring back to the basic sanity of the universe around us. Sane Nature versus Idiot Man. There is a tremendous Keatsian-Whitmanesque visionary sweep here, moving over the earth’s surface, always concentrating on light, the Here and Now, but always in cosmic context. Smith’s work, carefully read and meditated on, is a course in cosmic-personal sanity.” –Hugh Fox

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14 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

CONTROLLED BY GHOSTS

Poetry, copyright, Jared Smith, 2007. Readings by Jared Smith, with original music composed and performed by alternative jazz artist Lem Roby. Recorded at Practical Music Studio in Des Plaines, IL, USA.

“There is a kind of certainty that seems to characterize Jared Smith’s best work, an understanding about place and the flow of spirit that makes you think of Thoreau along with a commitment as fierce as that of Pablo Neruda.” –Joseph Bruchac

“Again and again, Jared Smith takes us into a world that we feel is strange and impossible, only to make us see, suddenly, that this IS our life, our condition, and until now we have been shying away from reality. Years ago, on my author-interview show on NPR, I hailed Jared as ‘the most important new voice in American poetry since Walt Whitman.’” –Walter James Miller

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14 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

Download listen to Jared Smith | Controlled by Ghosts

SEVEN MINUTES BEFORE THE BOMBS DROP

Poetry, Copyright © Jared Smith 2004. Readings by Jared Smith, with original music composed and performed by David Michael Jackson and Andy Derryberry. Recorded and distributed by ArtVilla Record Company in Murfreesboro, TN in 2005.

“There is a lovely muscularity pervading Jared Smith’s work that’s reminiscent of the more obvious long-lined poets’ efforts, Whitman’s and C.K. William’s, for example. But Smith’s poetry is unique in that he seems unlike these other two writers, not to think in terms of an “overflowing line” but to peer, consistently, beyond it. What this means is that while Whitman’s long lines are incantatory and Williams’ are loquacious in a relaxed, double-hexameter sort of way, Smith’s work, much like an Action Painter’s, serves the ambition of the gesture and thus, of necessity, stretches beyond the canvas.” –Terri Brown-Davidson

“For Smith, there is a kind of pathos in human attempts to replicate the unfathomable beauty of a mountain or a star-filled sky, a pathos, which is worthy of regret, even mocking, but never rage, scorn, or absolute despair. Though his tone could not be called gentle, it is sympathetic to the human condition and the futility, frustration, sorrow, and bewilderment that accompany it. This sympathy elevates his poetry to the levels of the masters who have influenced him” –Joselle Vanderhooft

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14 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

Download listen to Jared Smith | seven minutes before the bombs drop

Lake Michigan and Other Poems

Jared Smith

Puddin’head Press, Chicago, 2005. ISBN# 978-0-9724339-4-5. Softcover

“There is a kind of certainty that seems to characterize Jared Smith’s best work, an understanding about place and the flow of spirit that makes you think of Thoreau along with a commitment as fierce as that of Pablo Neruda.” –Joseph Bruchac

“Again and again, Jared Smith takes us into a world that we feel is strange and impossible, only to make us see, suddenly, that this IS our life, our condition, and until now we have been shying away from reality. Years ago, on my author-interview show on NPR, I hailed Jared as ‘the most important new voice in American poetry since Walt Whitman.’”–Walter James Miller

“He is a master of interplay between sensuous detail and the universal, illuminating the facets of our electric civilization and evoking the earth from which it rose. Esthetically, discerning readers will see his spiritual kinship to C.K. Williams and compare his work favorably.”–Harry Smith

“There is a lovely muscularity pervading Jared Smith’s work that’s reminiscent of the more obvious long-lined poets’ efforts, Whitman’s and C.K. William’s, for example. But Smith’s poetry is unique in that he seems unlike these other two writers, not to think in terms of an “overflowing line” but to peer, consistently, beyond it. What this means is that while Whitman’s long lines are incantatory and Williams’ are loquacious in a relaxed, double-hexameter sort of way, Smith’s work, much like an Action Painter’s, serves the ambition of the gesture and thus, of necessity, stretches beyond the canvas.”–Terri Brown-Davidson

click on the covers for bigger image sizes please.

15 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

Jared Smith reading “Having Never Wanted to Own the Business” on The Poets’ Co-op TV Show Episode #12 live on May 4, 2008 on CCTV 54 in Louisville, Colorado. Please see www.videopoetry.org for more great poetry here…

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