Oak Wise
Poetry Exploring an Ecological Faith
Foreword by Irish Writer and Filmmaker Alan Cooke
Revised & Updated – Second edition featuring a new foreword and previously unpublished poems.
ISBN 978-1-938846-05-2 | 6 x 9 | 230 Pgs | List Price: $14.95
*Winner of the 2013 Nautilus Gold Medal for Poetry
*2012 Pushcart Prize Nomination
Published by Homebound Publications
Availability
Preview | Amazon & Kindle | B&N | Homebound Publications (Signed Ed)
Audio Edition on iTunes | Indiebound.org
About the Book
Oak Wise is a collection of Celtic-themed narrative poetry exploring the old wisdom of the Druidic and Shamanic ways of life. This collection is approachable to the curious seeker just beginning their exploration of the Old Ways; while at the same time remains insightful to long-time pathwalkers. As a preface to her work, Browning offers her readers an introduction to the central beliefs of Shamanism, then proceeds to her poetry, where she descends with the reader into an intimate account of one seeker reflecting on the “Biological Mother” (the earth) while communing with the ancestral consciousness to which we each are connected. In this, her debut work, Browning brilliantly reintroduces the ecological sensitivities of the old Earth-based faiths, which are profoundly relevant in this current age of environmental crisis.
Praise for Oak Wise
“Browning’s poetic portrait of the life of the earth connects ecological knowledge with soul-bearing expressions of love, vulnerability, and hope. By addressing herself to the earth, almost like a petitioner before an immensity, one is reminded of the Homeric Hymns. And by expressing frustration and anger with the things people do which damage the beauty of a landscape, one is reminded of early American ecologists like John Muir and Aldo Leopold. Thus Browning calls upon us not only to contemplate, but also to act.”
—Brendan Myers, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, CEGEP Heritage College; author of Circles of Meaning and Loneliness and Revelation
“Browning’s poems are of exquisite quality. Her literary background is not only impressive, it is esthetically set to reinforce and construct a world of rich imagery. This work, is a serious expression with a precise goal and a dexterous poetic sense of architecture. There is a philosophical peace that overlays even the passages of questioning and unease in the writer’s mind. The author takes us to a beautiful lyrical place that she has found and uses her talent as a poet to entice us.”
– Jean-Yves Vincent Solinga, Ph.D author of In the Shade of a Flower and Clair-Obscur of the Soul
“In societies that still bear an imprint of ‘the shamanic’, male and female shamans are a voice of the sacred. In these worlds, from bardic Ireland to the crazy wisdom ngakpas of the Himalayas, poetry is a facet of the shamanic tradition. The work of L.M. Browning is undoubtedly one of these wisdom-streams. Her sight, voice and verses are a force of nature, simultaneously reminding us what we’ve forgotten and foretelling what we must remember to survive.”
—Frank L. Owen Jr., creator of Bodhiyatra Poetry
“… Oak Wise is gentle, yet unrelenting in its exhortation of us to return to the land and a more conscious, spiritually engaged way of life.”
— J.M. Reinbold, author of: Cernunnos, Ancient Celtic God
In times when many are starting to remember we forgot many things along the road, the journey of L.M. Browning might arise other landscapes into the reader’s life and the way we relate to nature and ourselves.
—Ximena Eduarda, reviewer for The Druid Network
“…Oak Wise is a hymn to the earth, full of grief and celebration.”
—Bryn Colvin, reviewer for The Druid Network