Apprentice to a Breathing Hand
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Poetry that considers how we live with constant shifts, positioning alchemy as an example of endless change.
The poetry of Laynie Browne’s Apprentice to a Breathing Hand explores alchemy, connectivity, and perception. Throughout the collection, Browne considers the formation and limits of personhood, the experience of a body moving through time, and the imperative to continually learn and unlearn. Browne looks to alchemy as a practice for cultivating the impossible, positioning it as a fitting model for our current moment. In the material of language, meaning must be unmade and remade endlessly, and in this continual regeneration, Browne considers the alchemy of how a poem can in turn transform the poet. Moving through methods of making and unmaking, the collection centers on the figure of an apprentice working in a space of indeterminacy, lack, breath, and constant shifting.
The poetry of Laynie Browne’s Apprentice to a Breathing Hand explores alchemy, connectivity, and perception. Throughout the collection, Browne considers the formation and limits of personhood, the experience of a body moving through time, and the imperative to continually learn and unlearn. Browne looks to alchemy as a practice for cultivating the impossible, positioning it as a fitting model for our current moment. In the material of language, meaning must be unmade and remade endlessly, and in this continual regeneration, Browne considers the alchemy of how a poem can in turn transform the poet. Moving through methods of making and unmaking, the collection centers on the figure of an apprentice working in a space of indeterminacy, lack, breath, and constant shifting.
Laynie Browne is the author of seventeen collections of poems, three novels, and a book of short fiction. Her recent books of poetry include Intaglio Daughters, Practice Has No Sequel, Letters Inscribed in Snow, and Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists. She coedited I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women and edited A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on The Poet’s Novel. Her work has appeared in publications including Conjunctions, A Public Space, New American Writing, BrooklynRail, and in anthologies including The Ecopoetry Anthology, The Reality Street Book of Sonnets, and Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology. Honors include a Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award. She teaches creative writing and coordinates the MOOC Modern Poetry at the University of Pennsylvania.