To celebrate the launch of her fourth collection of poems, Catherine Barnett has invited novelist Garth Greenwell and actor Dianne Wiest to share the texts that have kept them company in moments of loneliness, that essential human experience. Followed by conversation, inquiry, and conviviality.

The loneliness that collects in mirrors and faces—at bedside vigils and in city streets—quickens Catherine Barnett’s metaphysical poems, which are like speculative prescriptions for this common human experience. Here loneliness is filled with belonging, which is in turn filled with loneliness, each state suffused and emptied by the other. Barnett’s fourth collection is part manifesto, part how-to manual, part apologia: a guide to the homeopathic dangers and healing powers of an emotion so charged with eros, humor, and elusive beauty it becomes a companion both desired and eschewed, necessary and illuminating.