A tribute to Vereen Bell (1934-2021)
For more than 50 years, Vereen Bell served the Vanderbilt University community as a teacher, scholar, colleague, and mentor. His fellow Vanderbilt professor and longtime friend Mark Jarman shares a remembrance of Bell with Chapter 16.
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Little objects touch something tucked far away in the recesses of our hearts
The aluminum measuring cup was scuffed from so many years of use and had no value — except to me. That’s why when its handle fell off, my reaction was totally unreasonable.
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Different journeys, same destination
I had just finished my first-ever dish of angulas, baby eels, properly called elvers. They are a tasty specialty of Basque cuisine and come in a quarter-pound serving of tiny two-inch long animals, which look like thin transparent noodles with two black dots of eyes at one end.
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A writer gardens through an existential crisis
From the Chapter 16 archive: If there’s not enough time to read, why am I working so hard to send another book into the world?
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A poet alone in Costa Rica considers the nature of art—and loneliness
From the Chapter 16 archive: This type of travel is not meant to soothe; it’s not like a seven-day cruise where the aim is to make sure you never feel lost, unsure, or in want. This travel is about want. About loneliness. About insecurity. About all those things that go into the poems that stay with you, the ones that risk and surprise, that ache to be written, and that talk back to you on the page.
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I kept sinning despite my best efforts
As soon as I was old enough to know I should be good, I knew I was not. Much of this fear and guilt came from my grandmother, whom I called Meme. I remember seeing the same fear, much intensified, on her face when, much later, she lay dying. She could not be consistently good either.
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