Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

"Lighter"

From the Chapter 16 archive: Blas Falconer is the author of The Perfect Hour (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2006) and A Question of Gravity and Light (University of Arizona Press, 2007), and his work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Another Chicago Magazine, Third Coast, Puerto del Sol, Poet Lore, New Delta Review, and the Baltimore Review. “Lighter” originally appeared in the Hampton-Sydney Review.

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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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“Hosea’s Appeal”

Book Excerpt: Where the Wind Comes From

Richard Jackson has published 26 books, including 15 books of poems: most recently, Take Five (2020) and Broken Horizons (2018). He has been teaching at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga since 1976, where he directs the Meacham Writers’ Workshop.

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“Time Is a Desert of Rain”

Book Excerpt: Heirloom Language

Barbara E. Young is a Middle Tennessee native. She has known party lines, coonskin caps, hula hoops, transistor radios under the covers, 8-track, CD-ROM, Blogger, and Covid 19. She returned to writing poetry at age 60 and still has a lot to learn. Heirloom Language is her first full-length collection. Young will read from her work at Scarritt Bennett Center in Nashville on June 24.

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“How to Make a Wolf”

Book Excerpt: Every Lash

Every Lash is Leigh Anne Couch’s second collection after Houses Fly Away (2007) and a chapbook, Green and Helpless (2008). Her poems are published widely in magazines including PANK, Gulf Coast, Subtropic, Smartish Pace, Nelle, and Cincinnati Review. Now a freelance editor, she was formerly at Duke University Press and The Sewanee Review. She lives in Sewanee with writer Kevin Wilson and their sons.

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“Self-Portrait as Getting Drunk Dialed by God”

Book Excerpt: I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World

Kendra DeColo is the author of two previous poetry collections, My Dinner with Ron Jeremy (2016) and Thieves in the Afterlife (2014). She is a recipient of a 2019 Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and has taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and Vanderbilt University. She’ll discuss I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 23.

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