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
Ayers, Lana Hechtman: - Lana Hechtman Ayers shepherded over 150 poetry collections into print in her role as managing editor for three small presses. Sky Over (Fernwood Press, 2026) is her most recent collection and she has poems appearing in a variety of journals, including The London Reader, Peregrine, and Bluebird Word. She lives in Oregon, on the unceded lands of the Yaqo'n people, where on clear quiet nights she can hear the Pacific ocean whispering to the moon.
Myers, Jed: - Jed Myers serves as editor for the online journal Bracken, participates in the music-and-poetry ensemble Band of Poets, helps arrange and performs in benefits for World Central Kitchen, and plays in Easy Speak's house band known as The 52nd Street Band. Can't Be Far, Myers's fourth full-length collection, was a finalist for the MoonPath Press Sally Albiso Award. His previous collection, Learning to Hold, won the Wandering Aengus Press Editors' Award. His other books are The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press), Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), and six chapbooks. Currently retired from his therapy practice, Myers writes, makes music, and walks in the nearby wetlands along the Lake Washington shore.
