Laynie Browne's latest poetry collection, Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists playfully employs the list poem and delivers poems which evade genre and subvert the quotidian material of daily life. These poems consider elegy, absence and bewilderment while allowing associative logic to make poetic leaps in imagination and mood that belie convention. This book explores the myriad ways one could attempt to categorize a lived experience with its dizzying infinitudes by marking it in finite language, and ultimately shows how poetry is an experiment for that translation Browne's exquisite collection considers language, time, and poetics in a way that is as electrifying as it is elusive. In homage to poet C.D. Wright, her title is inspired by Translations of the Gospel Back into Tongues.

A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on the Poet's Novel provides a unique entrance to the rare prose of many remarkable modern and contemporary poets including Etel Adnan, Renee Gladman, Langston Hughes, Kevin Killian, Alice Notley, Fernando Pessoa, Rainer Maria Rilke, Leslie Scalapino, Jack Spicer, and Jean Toomer, whose approaches to the novel defy conventions of plot, character, setting, and action. Contributors: Brian Blanchfield, Anne Boyer, John Keene, Monica de la Torre, Cedar Sigo, and C. D. Wright bring a variety of insights, approaches, and writing styles to the subject with creative and often surprising results. Kazim Ali on Fanny Howe Dan Beachy-Quick on W.G. Sebald Edmund Berrigan on Ted Berrigan Brian Blanchfield on Aaron Kunin Rachel Blau DuPlessis on Gertrude Stein Julia Bloch on Gwendolyn Brooks Anne Boyer on Elizabeth Barrett Browning Traci Brimhall on Hilda Hilst Vincent Broqua on Stacy Doris Brandon Brown on Kevin Killian Lee Ann Brown on Carla Harryman Angela Carr on Nicole Brossard Julie Carr on Lyn Hejinian Norma Cole on Emmanuel Hocquard Brent Cunningham on Laura Moriarty Monica de la Torre on Martin Adan Marcella Durand on Robert Creeley Patrick Durgin on Tan Lin & Pamela Lu Norman Fischer on Phillip Whalen C.S. Giscombe on Audre Lorde Judith Goldman on Leslie Scalapino Carla Harryman on Gail Scott Jeanne Heuving on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Laura Hinton on Alice Notley Daniel Katz on Jack Spicer John Keene on Fernando Pessoa Karla Kelsey on Barbara Guest Aaron Kunin on Lewis Carroll Sonnet L'Abbe on M. NourbeSe Philip Abigail Lang on Jacques Roubaud Kimberly Lyons on Mina Loy W. Jason Miller on Langston Hughes Mette Moestrup on Ingeborg Bachmann Laura Moriarty on Keith Waldrop Laura Mullen on Bhanu Kapil Denise Newman on Inger Christensen Aldon Lynn Nielsen on Amiri Baraka Geoffrey G. O'Brien on John Ashbery & James Schuyler Jena Osman on Thalia Field Julie Patton on Jean Toomer Elizabeth Robinson on Rosmarie Waldrop Jennifer Scappettone on H.D. Susan Scarlata on Forrest Gander Brandon Shimoda on Etel Adnan Cedar Sigo on Eileen Myles Sasha Steensen on Anne Carson Donna Stonecipher on Peter Waterhouse Brian Teare on Rainer Maria Rilke Tyrone Williams on Nathaniel Mackey C.D. Wright on Michael Ondaatje Lynn Xu on Ben Lerner Rachel Zolf on Juliana Spahr

Laynie Browne's latest poetry collection, Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists playfully employs the list poem and delivers poems which evade genre and subvert the quotidian material of daily life. These poems consider elegy, absence and bewilderment while allowing associative logic to make poetic leaps in imagination and mood that belie convention. This book explores the myriad ways one could attempt to categorize a lived experience with its dizzying infinitudes by marking it in finite language, and ultimately shows how poetry is an experiment for that translation Browne's exquisite collection considers language, time, and poetics in a way that is as electrifying as it is elusive. In homage to poet C.D. Wright, her title is inspired by Translations of the Gospel Back into Tongues.

Endlessly inclusive, The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters, first published in 1994 and long out of print, evokes the complexity of real persons as it simultaneously reinvents multiple genres: epistle, prose poem, and memoir. Written between 1979 and 1980 while pregnant with her third child, Mayer extends her imaginative letters into meditations for us all on life as it is lived in real time, with its responsibilities and manifold desires. Fierce, lyrical, intimate, and wise, both new and familiar readers, both mothers and non-mothers, will find this book beckoning again and again to offer delicious writing, timely information, consolation, and advice.

Fiction. "Laynie Browne channels the energy of Mira in a book that is both charred and luminous. Her writing is a gift of abrasion, making the body of the reader a portal too. Who is arriving? Who is very near? The intensity of this narrative carried me through the summer in which I read it. Browne is a genius of aperture and stance. All desire, she has written a remarkable book. It changes something to read it (the book) and to have it near. If you are reading these words, then you have found your way to Browne's work and her immense, compassionate and tender genius as a writer and a human being."--Bhanu Kapil

Fiction. 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. "Part mystery and part Oz story, ACTS OF LEVITATION is a narrative of exquisite disappearances and re-appearances... As always, Laynie Browne's work is ephemeral, complex, and alluring"--Lisa Jarnot.

Jewish art has always been with us, but so has a broader canvas of Jewish imaginings: in thought, in emotion, in text, and in ritual practice. Imagining the Jewish God was there in the beginning, as it were, engraved and embedded in the ways Jews lived and responded to their God. This book attempts to give voice to these diverse imaginings of the Jewish God, and offers these collected essays and poems as a living text meant to provoke a substantive and nourishing dialogue. A responsive, living covenant lies at the heart of this book-a covenantal reciprocity that actively engages the dynamics of Jewish thinking and acting in dialogue with God. The contributors to this volume are committed to this form of textual reasoning, even as they all move us beyond the "text" as foundational for the imagined "people of the book." That people, we submit, lives and breathes in and beyond the texts of poetry, narrative, sacred literature, film, and graphic mediums. We imagine the Jewish people, and the covenant they respond to, as provocative intimations of the divine. The essays in this volume seek to draw these vocal intimations out so that we can all hear their resonant call.

How do we experience the world before memory, before language, before the senses have separated, or before the concepts of "you" and "I" have been distinguished? Laynie Browne investigates both the limits and potential of such an inchoate world in her new book of poetry, "Drawing of a Swan Before Memory."

In a series of elegant prose poems, Browne guides the reader through the intricate development of human perception, where the haunting vastness of childhood slowly gives way to the defining features of adult cognition. Subtly nuanced verse constructs a world of color before sight and utterance before language--all the while aware that, ironically, language itself makes this ethereal world possible.