As if
each hypothesis were a parasol which slightly changed the
light, Laynie Browne's poems
contain privileged messages from the spirit
world that must be shielded from the direct rays
of reality because such information might so easily
disintegrate, remaining unrecognizable
under the harsh glare and preoccupied
manner of contemporary scrutiny. In their hushed,
yet deliberate path, these
works constitute a labyrinth, a gentle, ritual encircling of the tidal
voice of
alchemy; whose secrets are not offered to be revealed but to be reveled
in,and
then
departed from, so that their unknowable nature may remain
untouched,
permitting us to leave
transformed- and exhilarated. Nick
Piombino
Here,
Laynie Browne shines as scientific mystic, as abstract
storyteller. She unfolds the
natural world into new spaces and
tales. Language under the electron microscope: "The
starfish is
neither star, nor fish." This is a completely revolutionary
'nature poetry' that is
rapturously structural (like nature) and intuitively
conceptual (like poetry). Mermaid's Purse
showers its complex gifts on
the included reader, never the same way twice. Lee
Ann Brown
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.
Currently she resides in Oakland, California.
