Fiction
Non-Fiction
Poetry
MEB
|
 Acts
of Levitation
by Laynie
Browne
ISBN
1-881471-94-2 $14.00 US |
$18.95 CAN 230 pages
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Amelia
has the
ability to levitate. During her wanderings through dream galleries,
costumed
performances, and future libraries she meets Clara
(an elusive
photographer),
Sebastion
(part human, part lion) and a chorus of cynics
who exist only
in partial bodies.
This
challenging first novel is a high-wire act of great beauty and
invention. Part quest narrative,
part ghost
story, Acts of Levitation is ultimately a study
in
longing—for the “other” who might
be lover or
sibling, and for the “self” hidden in the
center of a
dream. Laynie Browne enlists
all the
colors of the spectrum, and then some, to spin her
magic. Her
writing unfolds like a
pre-Raphaelite
dawn, expanding outwards and always
mesmerizing. Lewis Warsh
An ultra femme, absolutely exquisite writing/vision.
Acts is
extraordinarily imaginative and
remains with me as a luminous benchmark.
Lissa
Wolsak
Part mystery and part Oz story, Acts is a narrative of
exquisite disappearances and re-appearances...
As always, Laynie Browne’s work is ephemeral, complex, and
alluring. Lisa Jarnot
….an uncanny blend of grammar and
history. Publishers Weekly
(Rebecca Letters, 1997)
Like Scherherazade, Lewis Carroll, or the
Shakespeare
of the
late romances, Browne possesses
an ability to dazzle the reader by creating
wondrous worlds
in which
the usual laws of plausibility
are suspended. Indeed, her writing is saturated
with the
echoes, not
only of these writers, but of
numerous sources derived from the canon of
fabulist
literature. Outlet (The Agency
of Wind, 1999)
…reads like the bewitched counsel of an herbalist
dwelling
deep within the enchanted forest of language. The
Stranger (Lore, 1998)
Words murmur a
music
of spine and scented resin. Their aggressive approach to linguistic
play and
totemic
vision offer a genuine mechanism for the dilation
of the
pupils. Sulfur (Rebecca Letters,
1997)
Laynie
Browne
Laynie Browne is the
author of several books, including Gravitys
Mirror, The Agency of Wind, Lore and Rebecca Letters. With
others, she has curated poetry series
at The Ear Inn in New York City
from 1992-1995, and later as a member of
The Subtext Collective in
Seattle 1996-2001. She was awarded The Gertrude
Stein Award in
Innovative American Poetry three times (1993-1996). In 1998
her work
was anthologized in the book Poet's Choice, edited
by former poet
laureate Robert Hass. In 2000, she received a Jack Straw Writers
Program Award. She has taught poetry-in-the-schools in New York City and
Seattle.
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