Laynie Browne, Apprentice to a Breathing Hand
T hread
Vice is in—advice. Insidethread is—read, and red. Also, dear—
A mind made of drills, atentacle audience, personal scarlet,
potions of temporality
Do you squint as she approaches,toward large glass walls,
carrying needle andbroom, carrying music tied soundly to lack?
Will you revolve acres onpaper, paste onto envelopes? Invite
beams of light to kneel?
Have you ever writteninstructions to yourself, bereft of
apprentices?
Do you remember how tosinge fine power, how to turn twinge to
dawn?
How to rise up and twistthreads together until they learn to
cling—until—like lettersyou find your strand
Thelatest collection by Philadelphia poet, writer and editor Laynie Browne is
Apprentice to a Breathing Hand
(Oakland CA: Omnidawn, 2025), composed as a “responsetext” to the work of American poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. This collectionfollows a thread of response texts Browne has been working for a number ofyears, including:
In Garments Worn By Lindens
(Tender Buttons Press,2018), composed as a response to Lawn of Excluded Middle by RosmarieWaldrop;
Intaglio Daughters
(Ornithopter Press, 2023) [see my review of such here], composed as a response to the book The Unfollowing by LynHeijinian; and
Everyone and Her Resemblances
(Pamenar Press, 2024) [see my review of such here], composed as a response to the epic structures andpurposes of Alice Notley. It has been interesting to really begin to see the rangethrough which poets have been responding to the work of other writers over thepast few years, from the ongoing poem-essays by Perth, Ontario poet Phil Hall[see my review of one of his recent titles here; see a more recent interview I did with him here] and Montreal poet andtranslator Erín Moure’s Theophylline: an a-poretic migration via themodernisms of Rukeyser, Bishop, Grimké (de Castro, Vallejo) (Toronto ON:House of Anansi Press, 2023) [see my review of such here], to Montreal-basedpoet, writer and critic Klara du Plessis’ intimately-critical prose through theten essays collected in her I’mpossible collab (Kentville NS: GaspereauPress, 2023) [see my review of such here] and Edmonton writer and critic JoelKatelnikoff’s Recombinant Theory (Calgary AB: University of CalgaryPress, 2024) [see my review of such here], a collection of essays, ofresponses, to and through works by Lisa Robertson, Fred Wah, Lyn Hejinian,Steve McCaffery, Sawako Nakayaso, Johanna Drucker, Charles Bernstein, Annharte,Erín Moure and Christian Bök, each of which are done by repurposing theauthors’ own words. It is through the how of the response that provides and propelsthe possibilities of engagement, wending simultaneously through the deeply criticalto the intimately personal to elements of the festschrift. I think it began with atremendous sense of gratitude, to be here in this time, with these particularpoets. Unmistakably my life as a poet is possible, in large part, because ofthese female poets. The first homage text I wrote was for Bernadette Mayer. Iwas re-reading The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters, as ayoung mother, and I was amazed. Thus began my book The Desires of Letters.I’m writing another book for Bernadette now, which I began on the day of herpassing.
My dear friend, theextraordinary poet Stacy Doris, who left us much too soon, told me when herfirst book came out, that one poet she greatly admired appreciated the book,and that was more than enough for her. I just love this way of thinking ofpoetry as intimate and written not only to any reader, but also to a particularreader. Many years later the poet SawakoNakayasu, also a friend whose work I admire greatly, echoed this idea of anaudience of one. When I wrote the book for Bernadette I didn’t know that Iwould continue in this vein, and it was many years before I wrote anotherhomage text. Sometimes there is a very specific formal relationship between mybook and a book by the writer I am writing for, and other times the relation ismore conceptual or oblique.
Fromshorter poems to longer lyrics, the accumulation offers lines of extended lyricthought, as a kind of ongoingness, one set in three sections: “Apprenticeto a Breathing Hand,” “Euphoric Rose” and “A Self-CombedWoman.” I’ll admit I’m not familiar enough with Bersenbrugge’s workbeyond a collection or two, so can’t really speak to the source material andoffer comparisons, but Browne’s rhythms and phrases riff akin to bouncing ballacross the line, the lyric, the lyric sentence, and even make me more curiousabout examining her source. What becomes interesting, in part, through thiscollection is how she doesn’t overtly specify the approach or prompt of thesepoems, allowing them to speak on and through their own merit, allowing the responseitself to be the response, and not her particular framing or starting-point. Sheoffers acrostics, offers poems that begin with borrowed phrases, and otherstructures to work her way in, around and through her source material. As shewrites mid-way through: “I seal my intention to think less poisonous thoughtsby following / a path of letters [.]” Or, as the poem “Elusive” begins:
First advice, if you can’tfind your desk. Or if you don’t have a desk.
You still have to cleardebris. First the horse’s head, then the bird
outside the frame
Then the window. Then theone forsaken leaf, orange and
dessicated, caught inabandoned web
Push the calendar awayfrom the floating heart given to you by
radiance of undoing
If your light fallsadamantly forward, scarring your efforts, see this
as kissing paper
Look carefully at thefortunes pasted around you. If you find
carnelian, take off yourhands
