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Author's note: Intaglio Daughters is an homage text for the poet Lyn Hejinian. All titles (in italics above each poem) are taken from her book The Unfollowing. In the preface to her book she writes "I wanted each line to be as difficult to accept on the basis of the previous and subsequent lines as death is for we who are alive-a comparison that I make intentionally, since my intention in writing the sequence of poems I'm calling 'The Unfollowing' was to compose a set of elegies." In considering a form for Intaglio Daughters I wondered-what follows loss and rupture? What follows unfollowing? The mourning process often involves a non-sequential experience of time-and many returns, wavelike, in spirals or contractions. In keeping with this idea of rounds, sinuous or labyrinth-time, reaching backward and forward simultaneously, my book is a series of rondels, with the final line in each poem returning to, and resounding Hejinian's language.
About the author
Laynie Browne is the author of thirteen collections of poems and three novels. Recent books include: In Garments Worn by Lindens, Periodic Companions, and The Book of Moments. Her poetry has been translated into French, Spanish, Chinese and Catalan. She co-edited the anthology I'll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues Press, 2013) and edited the anthology A Forest on Many Stems: The Poet's Novel (Nightboat Books 2020). Honors and awards include a Pew Fellowship (2014) the National Poetry Series Award (2007) for her collection The Scented Fox, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award (2005) for her collection Drawing of a Swan Before Memory. Recent collaborations include a public art project, "Dawn Chorus" a curated constellation of poetry in thirteen languages by twenty-eight writers engraved in The Rail Park in Philadelphia with visual artist Brent Wahl. She teaches at University of Pennsylvania and at Swarthmore College.
