Overview

This début collection of poems from Timothy P. McLaughlin chronicles an inspired intimacy with the still wild places and presences of the Earth. The musical, iridescent language delights the senses and draws the reader/listener back into an essential creatureliness and basic loving kinship with the natural world.

Praise for Rooted and Risen

“Here is a wide-hearted man utterly in love with the ground on which he stands, with the broad-limbed and leafing trunks, with the antlered powers and the rain-swollen clouds. On some nights his sleep carries him down and down into the earth where he encounters his ancestors; on others, the crescent moon pours an unseen wine into his chest, and he begins to sing. His songs are these poems.

“Timothy P. McLaughlin is an oral poet, and hence the texts written herein are like musical scores; they are meant to be voiced aloud, their rhythms and tones sounded on the breath so they can join the conversation already underway between the thrumming crickets and the coyotes and the wind whooshing through the telephone wires. Yet the clustered words on these pages can also be viewed as cairns—piles of precise stones or terms marking McLaughlin’s way into the many-voiced forest, investigating the manner in which human language, by praising, transforms to prayer.”

—David Abram, author of Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology

“I love this collection—love the soul/heart’s evanescence flaking into stanzaic embodiments of bright effervescence to express our oneness, our beauty and fragility; these poems commemorate and celebrate our gratitude, each is a thumb-nail scoop of God’s love for us. . . .”

—Jimmy Santiago Baca, author of Singing at the Gates

“For poetry to do its magic, there must be evocative space around the poems and also space around the heart and mind of the poet—giving the reader room to move freely, to change, to see anew, to evoke a leap in the heart and an opening of the mind. From the truthful title, to the lovely section headings, to the poems themselves, Timothy P. McLaughlin offers the reader all of the above—and more!”

—Fr. Richard Rohr, author of Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“I am honored to express my support for this very meaningful book of poems. With this work, Timothy P. McLaughlin beautifully shares his vision of our planet. For many years, he lived among indigenous people, particularly the Lakota, and has participated in our cultural traditions with deep respect and great integrity. His writing reflects his devotion to the Lakota way of living in harmony and communication with all forms of life. Mitakuye Oyasin.”

—Basil Brave Heart, Lakota elder and author of The Spiritual Journey of a Brave Heart

“These quiet poems take the measure of a man who turns to nature to be instructed on being human. Like Rilke in his apprenticeship with Rodin, they record the struggle first to see, and then to sing the ‘tender, fledgling visions.’ More than a faithful record of moments of true seeing, the poems can turn into ceremonies, enacting ancient strategies for shedding ‘the stale swirl of thought as self’ and opening to fresh elemental energies. The book becomes almost a manual on how to go out into the natural world, empty yourself, and listen for ‘the pure prayer of pleasure that the Earth sings.’ A touching, tender debut.”

—Morgan Farley, author of Name Yourself Feast