The Earth beneath Lynching Trees: Poems
Ebook
Life in the fallen world is tragic, and it devolves to writers to artfully identify and name the trans-tragic, which includes love, joy, faith, hope, and courage. This challenge is real enough and rare in its successful achievement. Poems here address many of these themes, paying special attention to aspects of Southern history, culture, and tradition. They praise what is excellent while denouncing and rejecting prejudice, cruelty, and injustice in all history. The book catalogs "the good and the evil" and envisions an ultimate positive outcome for all peoples built on the foundation of faith in a Higher Power.
“In this collection, Vaughan proves that to be profound, poetry
need not be obscure. His poems focus on the ‘quite ordinary but
tragic intersections’ that can occur ‘on any given day,’ with which
all readers will readily identify. Throughout, the author’s faith
is evident—faith in God, no doubt, but also faith that humanity,
formed in God’s image, can learn, adapt, and endure. Enlightening
and inspiring!”
—Ray Moore, author of Slavery, the 1619 Project, and American
Education
“From a lynching in the south, to school shootings where
the good die young, while holding aging love on a trip to the
Ukraine and back, these are poems that grab the heart with a
visceral truth that won’t let go.”
—Donna Marie Todd, author of Navigating Loss
“Ron Vaughan’s poetry weaves threads of hope into the
tragedies, struggles, and losses of our lives, our time, and our
painful history. He sees with a keen theological eye and a warm
pastoral heart the power of forgiveness and love to bring healing
to our personal failings and our social evils. In laying bare our
grief, his poetry opens the way to redemption and life.”
—Lewis Galloway, former senior pastor, Second Presbyterian Church,
Indianapolis
“Vaughan’s new volume of hauntingly evocative poetry addresses many
of life’s experiences, from the horror of racism (poems from which
the book gets its title) and the pain of war to the wonder of
creation and the beauty and uncertainty of love. There are poems of
doubt and faith and of abandonment and intimacy. Often poignant,
breathtaking, enthralling; always creatively descriptive. This is a
book to be savored.”
—Sally Woodard, retired Presbyterian minister
- Title: The Earth beneath Lynching Trees: Poems
- Author: Thomas Vaughan
- Publisher: Resource Publications
- Print Publication Date: 2022
- Logos Release Date: 2022
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781666756791, 9781666756784, 9781666756777, 1666756792, 1666756784, 1666756776
- Resource ID: LLS:9781666756791
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-18T20:17:24Z
Raised and educated in five Southern states, Thomas Ronald
Vaughan is a poet, author, and ordained minister. He has spent his
career as a healthcare administrator and parish minister in the
United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (USA). His
writings include three works of theology, and this, his seventh
book of verse. Many of these are available through Wipf and Stock
imprints. He and his wife, Jayne, live in the mountains of western
North Carolina, near Asheville.