Contributions
- Five Poems by Laynie Browne
Read five poems by Laynie Browne, our first of seven biweekly poets of the Summer 2025 issue, along with a few words about the poem “2 December 2024.”
About the Contributor
Laynie Browne is a poet, prose writer, artist, editor and teacher. Her recent books of poetry include: Everyone & Her Resemblances (Pamenar, 2024), Intaglio Daughters (Ornithopter 2023), Practice Has No Sequel (Pamenar 2023), Letters Inscribed in Snow (Tinderbox 2023), and Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists (Wave Books, 2022). In 2024 a solo show of her collage titled “On the Way to the Filmic Woods” was exhibited at the Brodsky Gallery at Kelly Writer’s House. She co-edited the anthology I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues Press) and edited the anthology A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on The Poet’s Novel (Nightboat). Honors include a Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award for her collection The Scented Fox, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award for her collection Drawing of a Swan Before Memory. She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
Author Website
Recent Books
Apprentice to a Breathing Hand (Omnidawn, 2025)
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.
Everyone and Her Resemblances (Pamenar Press, 2024)
Everyone and her Resemblances is a poetic sequence in the form of a conversation with an oracular presence—a text to walk a reader through blindness. “Her” is at once: other and icon. These poems are entities you can talk to. Escorts beyond the edges of the permissible, the knowable. This text is a written companion, an excursion into the realm of the ethereal, dream, loss and an exploration of human and inexplicable consciousness.
Intaglio Daughters (Ornithopter Press, 2023)
Laynie Browne’s deeply moving Intaglio Daughters follows Lyn Hejinian’s The Unfollowing section by section. Hejinian’s book deals with the effect of sudden loss. It might be too simple to say that Browne’s is a gesture of reconnection and healing—but it wouldn’t be entirely wrong either. Each of these rondel jewel-like poems takes off from a line of Hejinian’s and circles back at the end to rewrite/ re-envision it. It is Browne’s uncannily good ear that makes it work. In an age of suspicion and careless wreckage, Browne’s homage to Hejinian, her affirmation of relation and lineage, is both surprising and necessary. —Rae Armantrout
Recent Links
- Poem: from Antediluvian Sonnets (Annulet)
- Three Poems (Three Fold Press)
- Interview: seven questions for Laynie Browne (Touch the Donkey)
Contributor Q & A
How long have you been a writer and how did you get started?
I wrote my first poem at nine years old, after a babysitter gave me a collection of poems, and I continued to write poetry steadily since that time. I am extremely lucky to have had many extraordinary teachers, mentors, and contemporaries who have made my life as a writer possible. My first writing teacher was Ishmael Reed, who suggested that I study with C.D. Wright, and that led me to pursue an MFA at Brown University where I studied with the Keith Waldrop, and was introduced to all of the writers who became essential to my own work, such as Rosmarie Waldrop, Bernadette Mayer, Lyn Hejinian, and Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, to name just a few.
What’s an accomplishment in your writing life of which you’re proud and what do you still hope to achieve?
I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to collaborate on a public art project in Philadelphia, with artist Brent Wahl, at The Rail Park at Callow Hill. For this project, I curated a constellation of poetic fragments in 13 languages. The piece is titled "Dawn Chorus" and you can read the selections and their translations here: [Click here to view] I also created a related podcast.
Future goals include more poetic pilgrimages, time spent in archives doing research for future works, and continuing to develop visual work. For instance, I'd like to visit the tarot gardens of Niki de Saint Phalle.
What do you look for in a book? Who are your favorite writers?
Bernadette Mayer is my first suggestion. Begin with her Sonnets and her infamous experiments. Read all of Mayer, Notley, Hejinian, Scalapino, Vicuña, so much more . . . In terms of prose, I've been obsessed lately with Vidgis Hjorth. I turn to all of the arts for inspiration. I love the paintings of Remedios Varo, Hilma af Klint, and so many others. The choreography of Trisha Brown, Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham and Mark Morris are hugely important to me. The plays of Richard Foreman are also hugely important to me.
Contents
Chapbook Poem: The Blessed Knot by Li-Young Lee
“A well-made poem is a knot, but not a tangle. The well-made knot of a poem can disentangle readers from illusion, to free them from confusion. Poetry is a form of disillusionment.” Read the July Chapbook Poem by Li-Young Lee along with words from the poet.
“This work is an archive of my attempts to become more familiar with who I am, and why I am here, to immerse myself in these ancient spiritual questions…” Check out five poems and five images by Laynie Browne along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: Creating Space by Lisa Sewell
“Yoga, the walks, and the writing became a daily exercise in paying attention—to the world, to the bodies in the world around me and to my own body…” Read the Excerpt Poem of the Month for July 2025 by Lisa Sewell along with words from the poet.
“My poetry tries to examine … the difference between the lives we live inside ourselves and the lives we expose to other people.” Read five poems by William Doreski along with a few words from the poet.
July ’25: Poetry Readers Wanted
Read a note from editor Aiden Hunt about PCR’s Summer poetry and new poetry reader opportunities brought by our growing original poetry submissions.
Four Poems by allison whittenberg
“I grew up as a film buff and I loved reading Hollywood Babylon. Over the years, I have learned to separate the truth from the myths.” Read four poems by allison whittenberg along with a few words from the poet.