Tippett: I want to talk a little bit more about the corporate sphere just before we move on. So I wonder what you have learned about — how does poetry land in the middle of a workplace, in working life? What does it do in us and for us in that context?
Whyte: Well, I always say that poetry is language against which you have no defenses. But you have to say it, also, with the intimacy of care and of understanding at the same time. You can also hear it in a marital argument. You get beautiful echoes and chords and repetitions in marital arguments.
But in a good marital argument, when one person has said the truth, both people are emancipated into the next stage of the relationship. Unfortunately, if you are not the person who said it, you have to have a little rear-guard action where you deny it. You can turn your face away from what was said, but when you turn your face back, it will still be waiting for you. One is just as a poet, with the intimacy of my readers and my listeners and audiences.
Then I work in the theological and psychological worlds. First of all, one of the powerful dynamics of leadership is being visible. One of the dynamics you have to get over with is this idea that you can occupy a position of responsibility, that you can have a courageous conversation without being vulnerable. Shall I read a little piece of it? Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not a choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state.
To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.
To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances is a lovely, illusionary privilege and perhaps the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human and especially of being youthfully human, but it is a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers; powers eventually and most emphatically given up, as we approach our last breath.
The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance. Our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant, and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.
Whyte: Yes, well, there are two different forms of belonging, I suppose. And to have a sense of belonging in the outer world, where you feel a sense of freedom, comes from this ability to touch this deep foundation of aloneness. And I do feel if you can touch that sense of aloneness, you can live with anyone.
Whyte: Yes. I was writing night and day, but I noticed when I sat at this lovely little desk, which I still have on a landing at the top of the stairs — I noticed that I had this very different relationship to the world when I wrote at night.
There was this other horizon outside the window that was drawing me and that was contextualizing what I was writing, so I wrote this piece. Whyte: I did. You must learn one thing. You move from your 20s into your 30s, and you suddenly find another larger form for it or a different shape that makes a different connection.
And then you deepen it in your 40s. And you get overwhelmed by it in your 50s. And then it returns to you again in more mature forms, settled forms, in your 60s. We all know what that intuitively means. Literally, all the struggles of your grandparents and your parents in arriving together and giving birth to your parents and giving birth to you, the landscape in which you were nurtured, the dialect or language in which you were educated into the world, the smells of the local environment.
When I go back to Yorkshire, just the taste of the water off the moors is completely different. When I go to County Clare, the water there, again, has a spirit because it comes off limestone there.
Will I have that conversation? This is the experience of consummation, of a full incarnation in the world. There are many people in Syria now just trying to preserve their lives and the lives of their loved ones. This has always been there and always been true. And who knows? We go through those very, very narrow places. The way I interpreted it was the discipline of asking beautiful questions and that a beautiful question shapes a beautiful mind.
The ability to ask beautiful questions, often, in very unbeautiful moments, is one of the great disciplines of a human life. And a beautiful question starts to shape your identity as much by asking it as it does by having it answered.
Tippett: Yes, he is. You call forth something beautiful by asking a beautiful question. Whyte: Yes, you do. What are you learning anew at this moment in your life about what it means to be human? The cloud is the cloud; the mountain is the mountain; the tree is the tree; the hawk is the hawk. Can I have a day as a crow? You know, hang out with my mates, glide down for a bit of carrion now and again?
But we, as human beings, are really quite extraordinary in that we can actually refuse to be ourselves. We can get afraid of the way we are. We can temporarily put a mask over our face and pretend to be somebody else or something else. And the interesting thing is then we can take it another step of virtuosity and forget that we were pretending to be someone else and become the person we were on the surface at least, who we were just pretending to be in the first place.
Whyte: So one of the astonishing qualities of being human is the measure of our reluctance to be here, actually. And this is not to give it away. This is just to understand what lies between you and a sense of freedom in it.
His latest collection is David Whyte Essentials. And the last voice that you hear singing at the end of our show is Cameron Kinghorn. It is distributed to public radio stations by PRX. I created this show at American Public Media. The Fetzer Institute, helping to build the spiritual foundation for a loving world. Find them at fetzer. Kalliopeia Foundation. Dedicated to reconnecting ecology, culture, and spirituality. Supporting organizations and initiatives that uphold a sacred relationship with life on Earth.
Learn more at kalliopeia. The way Whyte recites poetry includes this odd, distracting habit of repeating phrases frequently. He does it so that you really grasp the significance of the line, but the pacing and space is all messed up. The track breaks on the CD are in strange places. I haven't looked closely, but maybe they're just equally timed. But they're not placed between themes, paragraphs, poems, whatever.
To find something you have to track change and just fast forward or rewind, or maybe listen to the track. If you want to queue up a specific thought, good luck. Those are minor nitpicks in the end. I'll listen to this CD many times over. Feb 25, Anita Ashland rated it it was amazing Shelves: non-fiction. Whyte is my favorite poet, so it is wonderful to listen to him talk about the midlife passage, and how important it is to reap the harvest of this stage of life. He also weaves in quotes from his own poetry and the poetry of others like Rilke and Mary Oliver.
This is the second time I've listened to this and I plan on listening to it once a quarter or so. There isn't a print version of this audio book. His insights are very Jungian to me and Jungian analyst James Hollis's audiobook Through the D Whyte is my favorite poet, so it is wonderful to listen to him talk about the midlife passage, and how important it is to reap the harvest of this stage of life.
Dec 27, Mike McFadden rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites. I've listened to this at least 5 times in the last 12 months. It's filled with amazing stories and antidotes that help reorient one's view of life. Aug 28, Behrooz Parhami rated it really liked it. I listened to the unabridged 3-hour audio version of this title read by the author, Sounds True, While talking about I listened to the unabridged 3-hour audio version of this title read by the author, Sounds True, While talking about the need to engage with the poetic imagination as a companion and guide for the challenging terrain of midlife, Whyte makes a remarkable observation: A swan is extremely awkward when it walks on land, barely able to maintain its balance, but it undergoes a magical transformation, as it steps from land into the water, suddenly becoming agile and majestic.
We all need to find our elements, the setting in which we can be graceful and self-assured. Elsewhere, Whyte opines that one of the saddest things to observe in this world is an old person who has become bitter and cynical. The outer bodily deterioration, combined with the mind's inner rot, is simply unbearable! The book gives food for thought and time to reflect on important things in life and our inner priorities. A good read.
Jan 02, Jon rated it it was amazing. Whoa, mind blown! Came across this innocently enough after hearing David interviewed by Krista Tippet. What drew me in was how he spoke of poetry as a vocabulary for the numinous and how this extended to our everyday lives. Nothing new in itself but I've never been convinced previously. I went in expecting poetry with a focus on midlife what I found was much more. What was it? A short read, I'll be going over it again soon to pull mor Whoa, mind blown!
A short read, I'll be going over it again soon to pull more out of it. Jul 15, Amy rated it it was amazing. I will refer to this again and again. Apr 06, Mehrsa rated it liked it. I liked Whyte's book, The Three Marriages and thought I would read the others, but this one was not good.
It was mostly his musings and his poetry. And though I am a fan of poetry, I am not a fan of his poetry. Mar 02, Shishir rated it really liked it. Powerful wise and profound words dressed in crafted imagery of language often repeated for maximum effect - Brilliant Wisdom of age and aging brought to life in beautiful language weaving deeper meanings to the most mundane.
Jul 19, Claire Steele rated it it was amazing. There is great wisdom to be found in the simplicity with which David Whyte articulates the things of the spirit, the love of the landscape and the challenges and rewards of a life lived creatively. A book to return to again and again.
Nov 05, Madison Buchanan rated it it was amazing. Definitely go with audiobook. Dec 29, Ryan rated it liked it. So much of poetry is in the reading; specifically in the rhythm. David Whyte is clearly talented and has some very interesting ideas and philosophies that resonate quite deeply. However, I could not get past something very little on this audio-book, his repetition of phrasing. Whenever Whyte chooses to place emphasis on something, a verse or line or couplet, he'll stop and repeat that line to place emphasis.
I understand what he's trying to do. He's trying to draw our attention to what he believ So much of poetry is in the reading; specifically in the rhythm. He's trying to draw our attention to what he believes to be the crucial points in the poem, but in doing so he robs the poem itself of its natural rhythm and flow. He does not allow us the silence between the lines to come to our own personal understanding and reflection--the very point he's partially pushing for.
And once you notice this phrasing, it's impossible for you not to hear it and it becomes distracting. May 31, Gydle rated it it was amazing. I thought I didn't like poetry. Well, I was wrong. I just needed to listen to it, not read it on a page in a book. Listen to it preferably walking along the ocean, or in a forest, with one ear out, tuned to the birdsong. David Whyte's voice is like ice cream. Rich, sonorous, satisfying. The Irish undertones are so lovely. Lots of people complain about him repeating lines.
I find it helpful. Getting the whole poem just once would not work. He repeats bits of it, repeats the whole thing, talks about I thought I didn't like poetry.
He repeats bits of it, repeats the whole thing, talks about it, then says it again. You have a chance to get it and think about it. This is the kind of thing you will come back to again and again.
I've already listened to it twice. I also like that he doesn't just read his own poetry, but also the poetry of Rilke and others. Feb 06, Donna rated it it was amazing. Loved it!! I listened to the entire CD while walking by the lake one spring morning So beautiful! Listened to the CD several times more since that day and continue to enjoy it and be inspired by it as I was the first time. Jun 14, Sarah rated it it was amazing. I picked this book up because I liked some poems I had read by the author Your mind open.
Meeting the world. A second Darwin, perhaps. Only a few short months into time amongst the bird cries, the incoming waves, and the disturbing everyday inter-animal violence of the life there, I find that none of the animals or birds have read a single zoology book that I have read. That they have lives and secret selves unmediated by human classification and naming. To my consternation, I find that I am really not equipped with a language to describe what I am experiencing: most especially the imminent sense of death and disappearance that is present in those islands.
One evening on the boat I am guiding, staring at the swift falling equatorial sunset, I find myself quietly unraveling, my firm sense of self with which I had reached the islands, broken apart by the complex interwoven immensity of what I was witnessing. For a while, in those islands, I am just barely holding on to the fixed sanity I brought with me.
But not just witnessing. One other day, three months into my time there, I am on a new boat as a guide, with a new crew who have still not accepted me, with new people who are irritating me, with a newly woken, more vulnerable me, not knowing how to fit anywhere in the world, natural or human, and I have to say, walking along, feeling a little sorry for myself.
To comfort myself with some sort of insulated aloneness, I walk 20 paces ahead of everyone along the path, and there on a branch right across the path, at eye level, I come across an unblinking, unmoving guardian to the secret of my future life, and in a way, the work and the writing I will do in that life.
I stop, everyone stops behind me; the hawk just stays there looking back, swaying slightly on its branch, yellow hawk eyes staring into my brown human eyes. I stop, and I stare back. I am looking into the essence of hawk-ness in the world.
I am looking straight into the well and the depths of its eyes, I am looking at that corner of creation which laughs at any manufactured name we have given it, but is hawk-ness itself. Time stops its linear procession and begins to radiate from where I stand. I feel simultaneously a physical, body unravelling and a sense of revelation all at the same time.
The surprise in the revelation is that I have the experience of the hawk looking just as deeply into that corner of creation that I occupy in my humanity. But it is looking straight beneath any surface personality, any David Whyte-ness and straight to another, unnameable foundation that I am just beginning to understand. Many years later, I look back on that fixed image of the hawk as a guardian to the temple of the self — which once we enter the temple is, actually, no fixed self at all.
But a moving conversation. The encounter with the hawk is the first of a series of ever deeper steps into the conversation every human being discovers and is initially frightened by, between what you think is you, and what you think is not you. It is the ancient, conversational dynamic around what seem like two opposing poles, and one every great contemplative tradition has centered its disciplines around.
I return to North Wales on a cold October day, the wind like a knife off the Irish Sea, felt very keenly indeed after two years in South America. I am returning to Eryrie, those mountains of longing, not knowing what I will do in the future, as a scientist or an artist. I come back to this place halfway up the mountain in Wales almost in retreat, to try and find out who is here after that extraordinary experience in those far-flung Islands. How can I follow that? I start writing.
I am in some way, like the classic Vietnam veteran, hiding away from the mainstream, except I had not been traumatized by violence, I had in a way been traumatized by beauty, the island sights still filling my dreams and its sounds still ringing in my ears.
I move into a tiny caravan on the farm, a tiny freezing caravan, looking out from the mountain, facing Ireland and the wind. I live there, I work there with John, the Welsh farmer. In the evenings, I write. Take some time to imagine David here. I know the land of Northwest Wales a little bit so I can see it.
What do you see? Let the space, the big skies soften your shoulders. WHYTE: I spend a good year there, digging the animals out of snowdrifts: lambing and shearing, dipping the sheep helped by the extraordinarily well-trained sheepdogs owned by John. Even in his worst temper, he never hits a dog; his aluminum crook is bent, however, from hitting stone walls in frustration as he instructs at high volume across the fields.
Somehow he manages to produce some of the best dogs in North Wales. People come from far away to buy these dogs. There are many winter nights when the wind comes up the Ogwen Valley below and threatens to blow my caravan away. Although we associate invisible help with unseen parallels, I always feel that invisible help can actually be interpreted in a very practical way.
We are a little community at Tan-y-Garth. Besides the main farm, there is an older cottage which is tucked into the very rock itself, a cottage whose back wall is the living rock of the mountain. Probably the original farmhouse.
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