Laynie Browne
Biography
Laynie Browne is the author of seven collections of poetry and one novel. Her most recent publications include The Scented Fox, recipient of the 2007 National Poetry Series Award, selected by Alice Notley (Wave Books), Daily Sonnets (Counterpath Books, 2007) and Drawing of a Swan Before Memory, winner of the Contemporary Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press, 2005). Of Daily Sonnets Ron Silliman writes: "It's a stunner and a delight. A pure dose of heady oxygen" and of Browne: "an icon for the generation of poets who are about to show up." She co-curated the Ear Inn reading series in New York and was a member of the Subtext Collective in Seattle, and is now part of the POG reading series in Tucson, Arizona. She has taught creative writing at the University of Washington, Bothell, at Mills College in Oakland and at the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona.
Poet's Note
From a recent interview conducted by Jason B. Jones for Bookslut:
The Scented Fox is, in part, a sort of fairy tale, right? But lurking behind these tales is a story about a woman who "set out in search of a form" . . .
The Scented Fox is based on the concept of received tales colliding with prose poem form. I use “tale” in the widest sense possible. This includes fairy tale, folk tale, legend, myth, bible tale, hearsay etc. When I say received I am thinking of Spicer and also the notion of cultural influence that we may or may not be aware of. No doubt, I was influenced by Gertrude Stein before I had ever read her work. In every instance, writing is a collaboration with what has come before and what will come after. Therefore, the writer is never actually accomplishing anything alone.
I did not intend for there to be a story about a woman who set out in search of a form. But then again, the task of the poet is always to be searching for new. Various characters within the book seem to share this pursuit of finding form—both real and imagined. If you consider form as evolution of poem or person, your question becomes even more relevant, as their voices at times interact: again a form of horizontal collaboration.
The stories in The Scented Fox are both familiar and made strange, and sometimes, the poems explicitly rewrite one another in various ways. (“I write in whichways aslant and nonne knowest otherwise where from these antiquated words did furrow.”) Does your procedure rely on specific found texts, or does it operate at the level of a cultural mythology?
The familiar is always the most strange, when examined closely, or entered deeply. I’m interested in this particular aspect of the form of the tale, which often explodes the known partially by being familiar. This book both relies on found texts and operates at a level of cultural mythology. At least that is the hope. Though I deliberately chose not to record all of the sources I used, I read and revisited tales from a wide range of cultures and time periods. Some of my tales are rewritten through a lens of current concerns, some using chance operations, and others move backwards, or snakelike through time, borrowing antiquated spellings and vocabularies. The deep unconscious level at which “tales” and all received literature operates is one center or pivotal lens. The invented tales are also received, one way or another. Again this has something to do with time. There is a timeless quality to a tale which may locate a reader anywhere.
Read more.Sample Poems
“Lovingkindness of Lovingkindness,” “Sentence of Lovingkindness,” “Compassion of Lovingkindness,” and “Presence of Lovingkindness” from Wave Offering (at Conjunctions)
“Compassion of the Sentence” and “Eternity of the Sentence” from Wave Offering (at 32Opus)
“Mist Netting” and “I Love You Into Pluto” from The Desire of Letters (at emilydickinson.org)
External Links
A review of Daily Sonnets by Ron Silliman on Silliman's blog
A review of Daily Sonnets by Charles Alexander at Chaxblog
A review of The Agency of Wind by Eric Lorberer at Rain Taxi
A recording of Browne at the Contemporary Writers Reading Series at Brown University
Information on Rebecca Letters at Kelsey Street Press
Information on Mermaid's Purse at Spuyten Duyvil
Information on Drawing of a Swan Before Memory at University of Georgia Press
Information on Daily Sonnets at Counterpath Press
Information on The Scented Fox at Wave Books