Extremely Busy Afterlife - by Laynie Browne (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Extremely Busy Afterlife investigates love unbound and unlimited by time, or any other physical circumstance, attempting to enter the enduring conversations most necessary to being and becoming. It is a work of received conversations with bodiless entities, some formerly human, some otherwise. This is a book of elegy-- a book of listening-- with pen and page-- an archive of transcribed messages from departed and invisible beloveds. Though the book is divided into sections, dividing the channeled conversations, there is also cross-talk. Distinctions between speakers and listeners dissolve and reverse as the book continues. This extreme listening which obscures or softens the boundaries between individuals and streams of consciousness, allows a seamless fluidity, translucency between the living and the dead. What if who or what one is conversing with, is not separate from any speaker or self? The use of the question (without expectation of resolution) as method of inquiry, and as vehicle, is inspired by works by Neruda and Jabes, as well as Lyn Hejinian's concept of " The Rejection of Closure."

About the Author

Laynie Browne is a poet, prose writer, artist, teacher and editor. She is author of twenty collections of poems and four books of fiction. Recent books of poetry include: Antediluvian Sonnets (Third Hand Books, 2026), Apprentice to a Breathing Hand (Omnidawn, 2025), and Everyone & Her Resemblances (Pamenar, 2024). She co-edited the anthology I'll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues Press) and edited the anthology A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on The Poet's Novel (Nightboat). Her work has appeared in The New York Times among many others.