Laynie Browne

Words were gods (PoemTalk #207)

Rae Armantrout, “Further Thought” & “Here I Go”

from left: Julia Bloch, Rae Armantrout, Laynie Browne

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During a visit to the Writers House during which she joined an interactive ModPo webcast and gave a poetry reading, Rae Armantrout also joined Al Filreis, Laynie Browne, and Julie Bloch in our Wexler Studio to record an episode of PoemTalk. We talked about two poems in Rae’s book Go Figure. The poems are “Here I Go” and “Further Thought.” Rae’s PennSound author page didn’t yet have any recordings of performances of poems from this new book, so we asked the poet to read them during the podcast session.

The sonnet is wrong (PoemTalk #206)

Lewis Warsh, “Polar Night”

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For this episode of PoemTalk, Al Filreis convened Anselm Berrigan, Kate Colby, and Laynie Browne to talk about a poem by Lewis Warsh, “Polar Night.” The recording of this poem available at Warsh’s PennSound page was made at a reading at Chapterhouse Café in Philadelphia in 2008. The recording was made by Jack Krick. The poem was published in the poetry collection Alien Abduction in 2015. (This was his first book of poems since Inseparable of 2008, so we assume “Polar Night” was written around then but not in time to be included in the 2008 book.) We make the text of the poem available here below; click anywhere on the image to see a clearer copy.

Raw from the bellicose tumble (PoemTalk #203)

Callie Gardner, “Culture Warrior”

From left: Laynie Browne, Julia Bloch, Iain Morrison

Julia Bloch, Laynie Browne, and Iain Morrison joined Al Filreis in KWH’s Wexler Studio to talk about a poem — or rather two versions of a poem — by the late Callie Gardner. One version, titled “when will my love return from the culture war?,” is 6-quatrains long. A second, for which we have a recorded performance, is four quatrains; there’s a variation on the second that seems to invite us to call it a sonnet. Callie added a version — organized in the quatrains — to their blog on May 1, 2020. On November 19, 2020, Callie read the shorter version of the poem as part of a live-streamed reading given by eight poets. Callie was the fifth to read. We link the YouTube recording HERE, and PoemTalk listeners are invited to watch and listen to our poem at 53 minutes into the group reading.

Every flower a reminder (PoemTalk #202)

Harryette Mullen, “Chasing Dirt”

From left: Laynie Browne, Harryette Mullen, Simone White

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Simone White, Harryette Mullen, and Laynie Browne joined Al Filreis to talk a six-page section of Harryette’s new book Open Leaves. The book, subtitled “poems from earth,” was published by Black Sunflowers Poetry Press of London in 2023. The section discussed by the group is titled “Chasing Dirt” and consists of two epigraphs, a prose-poem paragraph, a mixed media artwork titled Silent Talks by Tiffanie Delune, and a sequence of three-line poems across four pages of four poems each. Since PennSound’s Harryette Mullen author page did not yet include a recording of Harryette performing poems from Open Leaves, we asked her to read “Chasing Dirt” at the start of the recorded session. The pages from Open Leaves are available HERE.

Hack my name (PoemTalk #194)

Veronica Forrest-Thomson, “S/Z” & “Lemon and Rosemary”

The PoemTalk team once again went on the road — or, anyway, over the sea — and spent a glorious week in Scotland, talking and filming new discussions of poems with many colleagues. On one of those days we gathered with friends at the Fruitmarket Arts Center in Edinburgh. Poet Iain Morrison, one of the PoemTalkers in this episode and a member of the Fruitmarket staff, helped us coordinate and host this event. The other colloquists are Laynie Browne, Lee Ann Brown, and Anthony Capildeo.

Bray brassily (PoemTalk #187)

Mina Loy, “Love Songs”

from left: Maya Pindyck, Hoa Nguyen, Laynie Browne

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Al Filreis brought together Hoa Nguyen, Maya Pindyck, and Laynie Browne to talk about two of the poems (#1 and #4) in Mina Loy’s “Love Songs” series, which she published in 1915 in the first issue of Others magazine not long before her arrival onto the New York modernist scene the next year. A bit more than a half century later, Loy would die at the age of 83 in 1966; in 1965 the poet Paul Blackburn, who loved nothing more than to tape recordings of poets reading and conversing — along with Robert Vas Dias — turned the mic on and interviewed Loy at her home in Aspen, Colorado, and asked her to read poems and offer spontaneous commentary. The poems included all thirteen of the “Love Songs.” This remarkable one-hour-and-36-minute reading/conversation is available – both as a single recording and segmented recordings by poem and interview topic – at PennSound’s must-hear Loy page.

Nothing made of ink (PoemTalk #180)

Lisa Fishman, “Mad World, Mad Kings, Mad Composition”

At the Poetry Foundation, from left: Lisa Fishman, Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué, Laynie Browne.

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PoemTalk went on the road again, this time to Chicago, where Al Filreis convened Lisa Fishman, Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué, and Laynie Browne at the Poetry Foundation. Before a lively live audience, the four discussed seven short poems selected from Lisa Fishman’s recent book Mad World, Mad Kings, Mad Composition (Wave Books, 2020). They are: “Many People have heard” (51); “Others could tell the difference” (65); “Have sent a point” and “Who will confess that …” (73); “Taking a sick day to remember Mr. Fishman” (149); “A line through a forest” (150); and “Steering-wheel-in-the-field” (163).

Composition of life, as life (PoemTalk #175)

Joan Retallack, “The Poethical Wager”

From left: erica kaufman, Joan Retallack, Laynie Browne

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PoemTalk went on the road, along with PoemTalk’s editor Zach Carduner, our tech guru pal Chris Martin (Zach on video, Chris on audio), and our colleague Laynie Browne. We wandered up some PA/NJ/NY highways into the mid-Hudson Valley, landing at Annandale-on-Hudson, the home of Bard College, where we decamped with all our gear and were joined by Joan Retallack, erica kaufman, and Laynie.

Better to lose and win (PoemTalk #170)

Diane di Prima, “Revolutionary Letters”

From left: Kristen Gallagher, Lee Ann Brown, Laynie Browne

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Al Filreis and three interlocutors — Kristen Gallagher, Lee Ann Brown, and Laynie Browne — met up at the Kelly Writers House in Philadelphia to talk about Diane di Prima’s collection (and ongoing project) of quasi-epistolary poems, Revolutionary Letters. The group discussed three poems: #16 (“We are eating up the planet”), #19 (“If what you want is jobs”), and #27 (“How much can we afford to lose before we win”). Di Prima began writing the letters in 1968, and they were first gathered and published by City Lights in 1971. A red-covered fiftieth anniversary edition was issued by City Lights in 2021. Our recordings of di Prima performing these three poems come from various sources and are available at the di Prima PennSound page: for #16 we hear a a recording made in 1969, while for #19 we have undated tape (possibly 1982), and for #27 we hear a performance given at Naropa in 1978.

Far in toward the far end (PoemTalk #169)

George Quasha, “self fast” and “that music razors through” (preverbs)

George Quasha at the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation, December 2021 (photo by Al Filreis).

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Al Filreis convened Charles Bernstein, Anthony Elms, and Laynie Browne to talk about two poems by George Quasha. These were selected from Quasha’s most recent collection of his “preverbs.” The book, published by Spuyten Duyvil in 2020, titled Not Even Rabbits Go Down This Hole, consists of eight gatherings of preverbs; our two poems, coming from the final section — which bears the name of the book — are “self fast” (numbered 12; TEXT) and “that music razors through” (numbered 13; TEXT). The recordings we use in this episode can be found on PennSound’s extensive Quasha author page.