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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Planting Trees Whose Shade We May Never Enjoy
A writer gardens through an existential crisis
Essays
Toward What? Away From What?
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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Sex and Other Sins
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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Hurry Back!
I wandered in as though I’d been there many times before
When I was a freshman at Vanderbilt, 18 years old, I heard a rumor that there was a market down on Elliston Place that would sell beer to you, even if you were underage, as long as you were cool about it. It was called the Hurry Back Market, and I was underage.
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Nesting
On the mystery of mothering
This spring, thinning my garden beds overfull with hellebores, the early- and long-blooming Lenten rose, I accidently exposed a rabbit’s nest. It was the first I’d ever seen. I gently pulled back the top layer of gray fluff — then the scream. A humanlike scream of innermost fear.
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The Sucker
You can learn a lot from a poker game
I was 18 and about to be the first Vargo to leave Detroit for any reason other than war, thanks to a student loan, a Pell grant, and the gift of an academic probation program that gave kids like me one semester to prove our scholarly worth or go back to wherever it was we came from. I felt so smart.
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