High Lonesome [TRADE PAPER ]

High Lonesomeis a radio left on in a candlelit room, playing softly into the shadows as the hours fall through the evening. Interruptions of static, a slow confetti of grief drifting into the corners, mysterious white noise dispatches. Here is a meditation on estrangement—from an other, from the world, from the self—and its long aftermath spent learning how to cultivate tenderness and devotion in a world “where nobody / is tender enough,” a practice that alternates between sorrow and transcendence. These poems are little ceremonies of attention to a variety of lonelinesses, both human and non-human. Strange, lyrical and funny, the third collection of poems by Allison Titus simultaneously reckons with and marvels at “the luminously borrowed / experiment that living is” in a world that feels terrible and hopeful, beautiful and precarious.Allison Titusis the author of the poetry collectionsThe True Book of Animal HomesandSum of Every Lost Ship, the novelThe Arsonist’s Song Has Nothing to Do With Fire, and several chapbooks. Her work has appeared inTin House,A Public Space,The Believerand elsewhere. A recipient of poetry fellowships from the NEA and Yaddo, she is co-editor of the forthcoming poetry anthologyThe New Sent(i)ence, a collection of poems that center the non-human animal’s consciousness, agency and creaturehood, out with Trinity University Press in 2024.These poems speak to the human condition of loneliness in an entertaining, playful, and linguistically interesting way.