David Whyte
Poetry in the World of Work
© 2003 by Michael Finley
We give wonderful lip service to work: How it ennobles us,
gives us purpose, taps into our ingenuity.
But there's no denying the Dilbertian side of work: The office
is where the human soul goes to die.
Charlie Chaplin illustrated the soul-smushing power of the
Industrial Revolution in his film Modern Times. Today we pin our hopes on
the emergence of a post-industrial corporation, one predicated not on mass
assembly but on eliciting the unique knowledge and genius of the
individual worker.
Problem: how do you get at the knowledge and genius if the
worker is dead in the soul, as dead as Charlie Chaplain's tramp ever was?
There are probably a lot of ways. One way, the way David Whyte
had dedicated his life to, is ... poetry.
Now, a funny thing happens when you mention the word poetry to
a modern group. A few earnest individuals crane forward to hear better. A
few literaphobic people race for the exits. But mostly, we just go blank.
Poetry? Corporation?
The people craning forward in their seats need no
encouragement. And the people dashing out the doors are probably
unrecallable. But the rest of us can get a better feel for David Whyte's
idea, with a bit of exposure.
To begin with, Whyte's idea of poetry avoids the stumbling
blocks of rhyme and form, and the need some poets have to write as
obscurely as possible. The poetry he urges us to read, to think about, and
even to write ourselves, is a poetry of self-discovery, or re-remembering.
For the complete report, click on CLICK TO PAY ...
The poems Whyte selected are all easy to read, all intensely person
David Whyte
Love
After Love
by Derek Walcott
The
time will come
When,
with elation,
You
will greet yourself arriving
At
your own door, in your mirror,
And
each smile at the other's welcome,
And
say, sit here. Eat.
You
will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give
wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To
itself, to the stranger who has loved you
All
your life, whom you ignored
For
another who knows you by heart.
Take
down the love letters from the bookshelf,
The
photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel
your own image from the mirror.
Sit.
Feast on your life.
Lost
by David Waggoner
Stand
still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you
Are
not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And
you must not treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must
ask permission to know it and be know.
The
forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I
have made the place around you.
If
you leave it you may not come back again, saying Here.
No
two trees are the same to Raven.
No
two branches are the same to Wren.
If
what a tree or bush does is lost on you,
You
are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where
you are. You must let it find you.
Who
Shall Be the Sun?
University
of Indiana press, 1978
From
The Heart Aroused, by David Whyte
Why
are you unhappy?
by Wu Wei Wu
Because
99.9% of what you think,
And
everything you do,
Is
for your self,
And
there isn't one.
Everything
Is Going to Be All Right
by Derek Mahon
How
should I not be glad to contemplate
the
clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and
a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There
will be dying, there will be dying,
but
there is no need to go into that.
The
poems flow from the hand unbidden
and
the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The
sun rises in spite of everything
and
the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I
lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching
the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything
is going to be all right.
The
Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry,
edited
by Peter Fallon & Derek Mahon (Editor)
The
Railway Children
by Seamus Heaney
When
we climbed the slopes of the cutting
We
were eye-level with the white cups
Of
the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.
Like
lovely freehand they curved for miles
East
and miles west beyond us, sagging
Under
their burden of swallows.
We
were small and thought we knew nothing
Worth
knowing. We thought words travelled the wires
In
the shiny pouches of raindrops,
Each
one seeded full with the light
Of
the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves
So
infinitesimally scaled
We could stream through the eye of a needle.