“The Vargas-Vargas Affair” is a poem I wrote that deals primarily with narrative’s possibly innate (hard-wired) ability to sway judgement. It can transfix us. It has the ability to build within us empathy for a character & ultimately for each other, but it can also be a great tool for propaganda. There is always “the third side to every story,” but there are most often many more sides than that.

I hope this reading I made of the poem entertains you. The full poem can downloaded here as a pdf (The Vargas-Vargas Affair), so you can read along as you listen, or you can read it in peace & quiet on the Brooklyn Rail website, where it was first published.

Apologies for the quick reading style in the beginning – it would have been an hour long had I read it any slower. As it stands, the video is 45 minutes long.

Cheers, Joe