It will all work out okay by Allison Titus
It will all work out okay
Allison TitusOnce I hiked partway up a glacier on the other side of a dust storm
just north of Vik far off
I could see the sandy fields & the shaggy horses
that roamed them could see the seams of their breath lifting
little signals into the weep of it all I was someone else
back then someone maybe not even lonely Back then
I stood for a long time before the waterfall that broadcast
its white in a rush of lace The tour group was full
of complaints around the next scheduled departure
At the Blue Lagoon I watched strangers
at a bachelorette party take shots of vodka from tiny plastic cups
& toast the bride-to-be in her white bikini
Just like anywhere or the moon
& back then I was full of my own brand of laziness & shorthand
desire to get close to something life-changing & majestic
without working very hard for it Everywhere
I looked something was coming alive in dramatic fashion
a glimmer in the ache of the cape of ice that glazed everything over
those months of little daylight the dusk kept folding
its lava fields into a syntax
of evening It was beautiful It made me
smaller
SELECTED BY CHEN CHEN
Every time I read this poem, I’m especially moved by this turn a little over halfway into it:
“I was full of my own brand of laziness & shorthand/desire to get close to something life-changing & majestic / without working very hard for it.”
These lines remind me not to become a passive observer in my own life, not to just sit back and expect the external world to do all the heavy lifting of beautiful, radical transformation. A trip to Iceland may be transformative in the moment, and for a few months after, but what really changes a life, an inner life?
It takes sustained effort, this poem suggests, to do the worthwhile things—and to keep figuring out, for yourself, what is worth your particular earthly while.
Allison Titus is a friend and a colleague of mine in the low-residency MFA program at New England College. Every conversation we’ve had has been such a delight, full of book and film recommendations, and full of a kind of introspective quiet that, when acknowledged and given space to breathe, leads to richer communication.
I’ll always remember a Zoom reading we did where we alternated reading one poem at a time; we kept responding to the other’s previous poem with another poem, a process which became a marvelous form of talking. Talking through poems! I mean, this was one of my favorite conversations of all time.
ABOUT CHEN CHEN
Chen Chen is the author of two books of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (2022) and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (2017), both published by BOA Editions and by Bloodaxe Books in the UK. His latest chapbook is Explodingly Yours (Ghost City Press, 2023). His writing is widely anthologized, including in 100 Poems That Matter, 100 Queer Poems, Poetry Is Not a Luxury, three editions of The Best American Poetry, and two editions of The Forward Book of Poetry. His honors include the Thom Gunn Award and three Pushcart Prizes. He lives in Rochester, NY and teaches for the MFA program at New England College.
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SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in High Lonesome by Allison Titus, published by Saturnalia Books, 2023. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
“High Lonesome is 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.” (Source)
ABOUT ALLISON TITUS
Allison Titus is the author of the poetry collections High Lonesome (Saturnalia, 2023), The True Book of Animal Homes (Saturnalia, 2017) and Sum of Every Lost Ship (Cleveland State, 2010); the chapbooks Sob Story (Barrelhouse, 2018), Topography of Tears (Artifact Press, 2017), and Instructions From the Narwhal (Bateau, 2007); and the novel The Arsonist’s Song Has Nothing to Do with Fire (Etruscan, 2014). She is the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts… (more)
Read more poems by Allison Titus • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Follow on Instagram • Website • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
- This is Day 03 of Poems We Carry, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry—a living archive I’ve nurtured for two decades. For this milestone series, I invited writers I deeply admire to share poems that have meant something to them over time.
- Explore other works in pursuit of: longing • memory • nature • Or browse the index
- If this work resonates with you, please consider supporting the archive. Thank you for reading.
