How to Be Lonely is a collection of tragicomic poems that examines the nature of loneliness and its life cycle. It begins with a speaker at the terminus of loneliness and traces this life cycle in reverse, to see whether the behavior can be unlearned. One warrant of the collection is that loneliness is a learned behavior. Humans are connective beings; few babies prefer solitude. In this sense, loneliness is presented as a grief of sorts, in that it’s a person’s loss of connection with others. The irony that’s revealed over the course of the collection is that the speaker is not alone in his aloneness; he can easily be understood as the personified representation of a larger cultural scourge. In spite of globalization, social media, and the infinite proxies for connection that modern technology has proliferated, there’s growing concern of widespread isolation and social dissatisfaction. In other words, humans have never been more connected, yet they’ve never felt more alone. Due to the inherently private nature of loneliness, those afflicted are oblivious to their unity. The collection’s title How to Be Lonely is soon exposed as façade; loneliness is as easy as falling down stairs. Rather, the aim of the collection is to explore the possibility of unlearning how to be lonely. In it, lyrical mimesis serves as a vessel to embody the feeling, and narrative as a waterway for the vessel to traverse. Similarly, tragicomedy helps propel the vessel toward an unlearning. Its tragic component establishes the feeling as a darkness of grave consequence, and its comic component sheds new light on this darkness, allowing for a positive reorientation of the psyche with respect to loneliness. The speaker stands alone at the helm, lost at sea without chart, crew, or know-how. The reader charts his ham-handed journey home, to either calamity or humanity.
