Laynie Browne is the author of seventeen collections of poems, three novels, and a book of short fiction. Her recent books of poetry include Intaglio Daughters, Practice Has No Sequel, Letters Inscribed in Snow, and Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists. She coedited I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women and edited A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on The Poet’s Novel. Her work has appeared in publications including Conjunctions, A Public Space, New American Writing, BrooklynRail, and in anthologies including The Ecopoetry Anthology, The Reality Street Book of Sonnets, and Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology. Honors include a Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award. She teaches creative writing and coordinates the MOOC Modern Poetry at the University of Pennsylvania.

“In Apprentice to a Breathing Hand, Browne has convoked an opulent meditation on feminist practice and presence. This is a book of the phenomenologies of intention as functions of the senses: the five physical senses, yes, but also the other senses, that drive the self towards the ‘calm words’ that bracket both empathy and ephemerality. As far as instructions for living go, Browne ‘tries to explain’ but prefers to show, after the manner of Julian of Norwich. The terms of ‘wanting yourself back’ are dual: garner on the one hand, oracular on the other.”

Laynie Browne is the author of seventeen collections of poems, three novels, and a book of short fiction. Her recent books of poetry include Intaglio Daughters, Practice Has No Sequel, Letters Inscribed in Snow, and Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists. She coedited I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women and edited A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on The Poet’s Novel. Her work has appeared in publications including Conjunctions, A Public Space, New American Writing, BrooklynRail, and in anthologies including The Ecopoetry Anthology, The Reality Street Book of Sonnets, and Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology. Honors include a Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award. She teaches creative writing and coordinates the MOOC Modern Poetry at the University of Pennsylvania.

“In Apprentice to a Breathing Hand, Browne has convoked an opulent meditation on feminist practice and presence. This is a book of the phenomenologies of intention as functions of the senses: the five physical senses, yes, but also the other senses, that drive the self towards the ‘calm words’ that bracket both empathy and ephemerality. As far as instructions for living go, Browne ‘tries to explain’ but prefers to show, after the manner of Julian of Norwich. The terms of ‘wanting yourself back’ are dual: garner on the one hand, oracular on the other.”