Apprentice to a Breathing Hand

Poetry that considers how we live with constant shifts, positioning alchemy as an example of endless change.

The poetry of Laynie Browne's Apprentice to a Breathing Hand explores alchemy, connectivity, and perception. Throughout the collection, Browne considers the formation and limits of personhood, the experience of a body moving through time, and the imperative to continually learn and unlearn. Browne looks to alchemy as a practice for cultivating the impossible, positioning it as a fitting model for our current moment. In the material of language, meaning must be unmade and remade endlessly, and in this continual regeneration, Browne considers the alchemy of how a poem can in turn transform the poet. Moving through methods of making and unmaking, the collection centers on the figure of an apprentice working in a space of indeterminacy, lack, breath, and constant shifting.