Forest on Many Stems

Laynie Browne is a poet, prose writer, teacher and editor. She is author of thirteen collections of poems and three novels. Her most recent collections include a book of poems You Envelop Me (Omnidawn 2017), a novel Periodic Companions (Tinderbox 2018) and short fiction in two editions, one French, and one English in The Book of Moments (Presses universitaires de rouen et du havre, 2018). Her honors include a 2014 Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award (2007) for her collection The Scented Fox, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award (2005) for her collection Drawing of a Swan Before Memory. Her poetry has been translated into French, Spanish, Chinese and Catalan. She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and at Swarthmore College.

"This generous anthology will have a place on the shelves of literature professors and grad students."—Publishers Weekly"Whether engaged in close reading, philosophical discussion, literary discourse or theoretical deconstruction, this book articulates and extends that conversation. It is a challenging, focused and exciting read."—Tears in the Fence“You thought you were aware of what poetry could mean to you, could do to you, then her poems did something new to you.”—CAConrad “Laynie Browne’s You Envelop Me, written in the tradition of elegy, attempts to come to terms with the continuing presence of absence.”—Claudia Rankine“Laynie Browne has a knack for moving between worlds to channel an orchestra of animal, vegetable, and mineral voices.”—Lisa Jarnot

• CONTENTS:Introduction— The Poet’s Novel: A Form of Refusal I . Verse Novel“Poetry tells me I’m dead; prose pretends I’m not”— Alice Notley (39, Culture of One)“You Cannot Count That You Should Weep For This Account:” Aurora Leigh and the Problem of Math by Anne BoyerCane in the Classroom: Jean Toomer’s Classicby Julie PattonThe Monster in the Rotunda: Anne Carson’s Autobiography of RedBy Sasha SteensenMuse X : Lyn Hejinian’s Oxota: A Short Russian NovelBy Julie CarrDown in the Dump: The Abject in Alice Notley’s Culture of OneBy Laura HintonII. Genre Mash-UpsComposite, Cut-Ups, Review, Sci Fi, Writer as Detective“The images set off down the road and yet they never get anywhere, they’re simply lost, it’s hopeless, says the voice—and the hunchback asks himself, hopeless for who?.” (Bolaño, Antwerp, 18)The Cornucopia is Mapped with a Slipping Venn-Diagram and a Möbius Strip: William Carlos Williams and his The Great American Novelby Sarah VapFriendship as Method in Ashbery & Schuyler’s A Nest of NinniesBy Geoffrey G. O’BrienA Greater Greatness: Max Brand’s Twenty Notches becomes Ted Berrigan’s Clear the Range By Edmund BerriganLying in Wait: On Roberto Bolaño’s Antwerp as a Poet’s NovelBy Joshua Marie WilkinsonObituary of the Many: Gail Scottby Carla HarrymanKevin Killian’s Epic Poem of HappinessBy Brandon BrownDark Light: Paradox & Subversion in Laura Moriarty’s UltraviloetaBy Brent CunninghamA Ghostlike Interference: Jack Spicer’s Detective NovelBy Daniel KatzIII. Interior Lyric / Displacement/ Cartographic Time146“She wanted to climb through walls of no visible dimension”— H.D. (Hermione, 7)Hilda Hilst’s The Obscene Madame D: A Derelict Reader’s Guideby Traci BrimhallNarrating the Financialized Landscape: The Novels of Taylor BradyBy Rob HalpernStructure as Philosophy in Inger Christensen’s Azorno By Denise NewmanThe Point of Robert Creeley’s The IslandBy Marcella DurandAttention and Attunement in Forrest Gander’s As A FriendBy Susan ScarlattaOut of Marsh and Bog: “H.D., Imagiste” and the Poeisis of HERmione Preciselyby Jenn Scappetone Message in a Bottle: A Brief Introduction to Radical Love: 5 Novels by Fanny HoweBy Kazim Ali The School of Fears: Rilke’s Notebooks of Malte Laurids BriggeBy Brian TeareIV. Prose Poem / Concatenation / Novel Borders “An ambulatory fig tree strolled down a street crowded with seminarians, streetwalkers, and geometry professors—a thousand aging gentlemen, dirty collars, sticky fingers.” (Adán, 26)Impressions of Martin Adán’s The Cardboard HouseBy Mónica de la Torre“What Am I to Do with All of This Life”: Gwendolyn Brooks’s Maud Marthaby Julia Bloch“A Book” and Other Fractured Pages: Nicole Brossard’s Early Novelsby Angela Carr To Seek Air: Barbara Guest’s Inter-layered FictionBy Karla KelseyCarnal Knowledge: Carla Harryman’s Gardener of Stars: A Novelby Lee Ann BrownRereading Emmanuel Hocquard’s AEREA dans les forêts de Manhattan By Norma Cole“The Greek Fragment”: Irreal Salvation in Mina Loy’s Gnostic Text InselBy Kimberly LyonsGertrude Stein and the Poet’s Novel, Thank You.By Rachel Blau DuPlessisFidelity and Form: Rosmarie Waldrop and the Poet’s NovelBy Elizabeth RobinsonV. Portrait / Documentary / Representation / Palimpsest 303“I’ve read many stories of revenants and apparitions, but my ghosts merely disappear. I never see them.” (Keith Waldrop, 11)Etel Adnan’s Paris, When It’s Nakedby Brandon Shimoda“Mme Wiener,” the French Novelist and her Masks – Reading Stacy Doris’s Two French Novels by Vincent BroquaThalia Field’s Ululu (Clown Shrapnel): A series of detonationsby Jena OsmanTurning Poetry into Prose: Not Without Laughter and Langston Hughesby W. Jason MillerNourbeSe Philip by Sonnet L’AbbeComing through Slaughter, Michael Ondaatje’s Buddy Book by C.D. Wright“Light” in Light While There Is Light: An American History by Laura Moriarty“I’M ALL IN THE DIRD AND ON FIRE OR SOMETHING, GET ME OUT OF HERE.”The novels of Phillip Whalen, You Didn’t Even Try and Imaginary Speeches for a Brazen Head by Norman FischerVI. Metamorphic / Distance / Aural Address / Wandering “Everything in the poem was in transition” — Peter WaterhouseFernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquietby John KeeneMalina, MurderDeath in Ingeborg Bachmann’s Writingby Mette Moestrup (translated from Danish by Mark Kline)Two Sources of Poetry in Carroll’s Writingby Aaron KuninA Space for Bhanu Kapil by Laura MullenCircumambulation: Cowrie Shells, Bottle Caps and Balloons in Nathaniel Mackey’s From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate by Tyronne Williams“the equal instant space of action”On Leslie Scalapino’s Dihedrons Gazelle-Dihedrals Zoom (2010)by Judith GoldmanThe Tattered Labyrinth: On W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturnby Dan Beachy-Quick“The Terrible I”: On Peter Waterhouse ‘s Poem Novel Language Death Night OutsideBy Donna Stonecipher VII. Identification / Dissolution / Polemic / Bildungsroman 459“She says to herself if she were able to write she could continue to live.” —Cha (141)“I Got This Under the Bridge” / Notes on Audre Lorde’s Zamiby C.S. GiscombeOn Amiri Baraka’s Six Plus One Persons “a longish poem about a dude”by Aldon Lynn NielsenThersa Cha’s EroticismBy Jeanne Hueving A Fragmented Whole for Renee Gladman’s ToafBy Danielle Vogel Three Ways to Sunday: The Mandarin by Aaron Kuninby Brian Blanchfield Romantic Substance: Reading Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station with the Künstlerroman by Lynn Xu Stupendous Lore: Poet’s Novels by Tan Lin & Pamela Luby Patrick Durgin The Doors of Perception in Eileen Myles’ InfernoCedar Sigo Jacques Roubaud’s poet’s proseBy Abigail Lang Juliana Spahr’s The Transformation thinks wit(h)ness) by Rachel Zolf