Laynie Browne, Apprentice to a Breathing Hand

 

Thread

Vice is in—advice. Inside thread is—read, and red. Also, dear—

A mind made of drills, a tentacle audience, personal scarlet,
potions of temporality 

Do you squint as she approaches, toward large glass walls,
carrying needle and broom, carrying music tied soundly to lack? 

Will you revolve acres on paper, paste onto envelopes? Invite
beams of light to kneel? 

Have you ever written instructions to yourself, bereft of
apprentices? 

Do you remember how to singe fine power, how to turn twinge to
dawn? 

How to rise up and twist threads together until they learn to
cling—until—like letters you find your strand

The latest collection by Philadelphia poet, writer and editor Laynie Browne is Apprentice to a Breathing Hand (Oakland CA: Omnidawn, 2025), composed as a “response text” to the work of American poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. This collection follows a thread of response texts Browne has been working for a number of years, including: In Garments Worn By Lindens (Tender Buttons Press, 2018), composed as a response to Lawn of Excluded Middle by Rosmarie Waldrop; Intaglio Daughters (Ornithopter Press, 2023) [see my review of such here], composed as a response to the book The Unfollowing by Lyn Heijinian; and Everyone and Her Resemblances (Pamenar Press, 2024) [see my review of such here], composed as a response to the epic structures and purposes of Alice Notley. It has been interesting to really begin to see the range through which poets have been responding to the work of other writers over the past 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 and translator Erín Moure’s Theophylline: an a-poretic migration via the modernisms of Rukeyser, Bishop, Grimké (de Castro, Vallejo) (Toronto ON: House of Anansi Press, 2023) [see my review of such here], to Montreal-based poet, writer and critic Klara du Plessis’ intimately-critical prose through the ten essays collected in her I’mpossible collab (Kentville NS: Gaspereau Press, 2023) [see my review of such here] and Edmonton writer and critic Joel Katelnikoff’s Recombinant Theory (Calgary AB: University of Calgary Press, 2024) [see my review of such here], a collection of essays, of responses, 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 the authors’ own words. It is through the how of the response that provides and propels the possibilities of engagement, wending simultaneously through the deeply critical to the intimately personal to elements of the festschrift.

As part of an interview I conduced with Browne last year on this particular and ongoing interest in response texts, posted online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics, Browne responded:

I think it began with a tremendous sense of gratitude, to be here in this time, with these particular poets. Unmistakably my life as a poet is possible, in large part, because of these female poets. The first homage text I wrote was for Bernadette Mayer. I was re-reading The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters, as a young 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 her passing.

My dear friend, the extraordinary poet Stacy Doris, who left us much too soon, told me when her first 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 of poetry as intimate and written not only to any reader, but also to a particular reader.  Many years later the poet Sawako Nakayasu, also a friend whose work I admire greatly, echoed this idea of an audience of one. When I wrote the book for Bernadette I didn’t know that I would continue in this vein, and it was many years before I wrote another homage text. Sometimes there is a very specific formal relationship between my book and a book by the writer I am writing for, and other times the relation is more conceptual or oblique. 

From shorter poems to longer lyrics, the accumulation offers lines of extended lyric thought, as a kind of ongoingness, one set in three sections: “Apprentice to a Breathing Hand,” “Euphoric Rose” and “A Self-Combed Woman.” I’ll admit I’m not familiar enough with Bersenbrugge’s work beyond a collection or two, so can’t really speak to the source material and offer comparisons, but Browne’s rhythms and phrases riff akin to bouncing ball across the line, the lyric, the lyric sentence, and even make me more curious about examining her source. What becomes interesting, in part, through this collection is how she doesn’t overtly specify the approach or prompt of these poems, allowing them to speak on and through their own merit, allowing the response itself to be the response, and not her particular framing or starting-point. She offers acrostics, offers poems that begin with borrowed phrases, and other structures to work her way in, around and through her source material. As she writes mid-way through: “I seal my intention to think less poisonous thoughts by following / a path of letters [.]” Or, as the poem “Elusive” begins:

First advice, if you can’t find your desk. Or if you don’t have a desk.
You still have to clear debris. First the horse’s head, then the bird
outside the frame 

Then the window. Then the one forsaken leaf, orange and
dessicated, caught in abandoned web 

Push the calendar away from the floating heart given to you by
radiance of undoing 

If your light falls adamantly forward, scarring your efforts, see this
as kissing paper 

Look carefully at the fortunes pasted around you. If you find
carnelian, take off your hands