Review by Aiden Hunt
Laynie Browne pays homage to veteran poet Mei-Mei Berssenbruge in her latest poetry collection, Apprentice to a Breathing Hand. While eschewing Berssenbrugge’s fascination with light and quantum physics, many of the poems in this book feature the long lines and the phenomenological focus on which the elder poet relies. The resulting poems idolize and interact with Brussenbruge’s work while adding a fine addition to Browne’s oeuvre.
Poems featuring long lines of wrapped text appear throughout the collection, but the title poem of Browne’s second section, “Euphoric Rose,” forms the heart of the book. It consists of fourteen poem sections over fifteen pages, each with a first line that builds on words from the title poem of Berssenbrugge’s iconic Hello, the Roses (New Directions, 2013). Shorter and acrostic poems relating to the topic round out the section.
Though Browne borrows in this collection, her own unique experiences and interests still feature. A four-section late poem titled “The Self-Combed Woman” follows Browne’s feminist leanings alluding to a “cultural phenomenon of marriage resistance” in China’s Pearl River Delta, eventually abrogated by the rise of the Communist Party. The poetry in this collection is beautiful and evocative, but readers may need to work in understanding. Those who enjoy a poetic challenge or are fans of Berssenbrugge’s work and style will enjoy it, but casual readers may falter. Still, I recommend it.
Apprentice to a Breathing Hand by Laynie Browne. Omnidawn Publishing, April 2025.
Reviewer bio: Aiden Hunt is a writer, editor, and literary critic based in the Philadelphia, PA suburbs. He is the creator, editor, and publisher of the Philly Poetry Chapbook Review, and his reviews have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Fugue, The Rumpus, Jacket2, and The Adroit Journal, among other venues.
