Mermaid's Purse

"As if each hypothesis were a parasol which slightly changed the light, Laynie Browne's poems contain privileged messages from the spirit world that must be shielded from the direct rays of reality because such information might so easily disintegrate, remaining unrecognizable under the harsh glare and preoccupied manner of contemporary scrutiny. In their hushed, yet deliberate path, these works constitute a labyrinth, a gentle, ritual encircling of the tidal voice of alchemy; whose secrets are not offered to be revealed but to be reveled in, and then departed from, so that their unknowable nature may remain untouched, permitting us to leave transformed- and exhilarated."—Nick Piombino

"Here, Laynie Browne shines as scientific mystic, as abstract storyteller. She unfolds the natural world into new spaces and tales. Language under the electron microscope: 'The starfish is neither star, nor fish.' This is a completely revolutionary 'nature poetry' that is rapturously structural (like nature) and intuitively conceptual (like poetry). Mermaid's Purse showers its complex gifts on the included reader, never the same way twice."—Lee Ann Brown