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The Heart Aroused : Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America (Paperback)
by David Whyte
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Innovation, Creativity, Creative thinking |
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Author: David Whyte
Publisher: Currency
Pub. in: June, 1996
ISBN: 0385484186
Pages: 368
Measurements: 7.3 x 5.2 x 1 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01243
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0385484183
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- MSL Picks -
David Whyte, in The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, writes that "If there is one common experience of complexity in the workplace, it would be the experience of feeling lost... in the difficulty of a situation or in our very arrogance or nervousness over a problem." Whyte was encouraged as a resource to business by Peter Block-a trainer, organization consultant, and author of The Empowered Manager-because the powerful images available in poetry can be liberating in the workplace.
As a lover of poetry, I was delighted when a client gave me tickets for one of Whyte's workshops a few years ago. One of the poems that Whyte recited for us (and cites in his book) is a teaching tale in the Native American tradition by David Wagoner. It was a thrilling personal experience to hear in Whyte's resounding and dramatic voice Wagoner's response to the question, "What do I do when I am lost in the forest?" (shown in part below):
Stand still, the trees ahead / and bushes beside you / are not lost... / Stand still, the forest / knows where you are. / You must let it find you.
Observing Whyte's impact on others in the group (many of them business people) also gave me the courage to use poetry in my development work with business executives, focusing on the symbolic aspects of people's (and organizations') growth potential. David Whyte has done us all a service in demonstrating how powerful poetry can be in "arousing our hearts," in enabling significant personal transformation. I highly recommend his tapes and books of poetry, as well as The Heart Aroused.
(From quoting Mary R. Bast, USA)
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David Whyte grew up among the hills and valleys of Yorkshire, England. He is one of the few poets to take his perspectives on creativity into the field of corporate development, educating workers of many American and international companies about how to foster qualities of courage and engagement in their careers. In addition to four volumes of poetry, he has published an audiocassette lecture series and an album of poetry and music. His latest book is Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as Pilgrimage of Identity. He lives with his family in the Pacific Northwest.
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From Publisher
Like Dante, many of today's corporate workers find themselves lost in the day-to-day duties of their jobs. Our lives seem shaken by the events of September 11 and the seemingly endless examples of corporate scandal, it's become more difficult than ever to find meaning in the workplace.
Has your work lost its meaning? Are you afraid of pursuing your dreams for fear of failing or-worse-getting fired? Do you yearn to find creativity, and even joy, in your job?
In The Heart Aroused, David Whyte brings his unique perspective as poet and consultant to the workplace, showing readers how fulfilling work can be when they face their fears and follow their dreams. Going beneath the surface concerns about products and profits, organization and order, Whyte addresses the needs of the heart and soul, and the fears and desires that many workers keep hidden.
Through the poetry of both classic and modern masters, Whyte helps readers find both professional and personal fulfillment. In Beowulf, Whyte uncovers the key to confronting office conflicts. Like the poem's courageous hero, readers will travel to the belly of the beast of a problem and emerge triumphantly with a solution. The poems of Pablo Neruda help on find inner silence even in the busiest, most confining office space. With T.S. Eliot as a guide, Whyte teaches readers to appreciate the need to open themselves up to possible failure-and as a result, probable success.
At a time when corporations are calling on employees for more creativity, dedication, and adaptability, and workers are trying desperately to balance home and work, this revised edition of The Heart Aroused is the essential guide to reinvigorating the soul.
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What would our days be like if we came out of hiding and brought our fears, loves, and dreams directly into the workplace?
In The Heart Aroused, poet David Whyte shows that the best way to respond to the current call for creativity in organizational life is to overcome our habitual fear and reticence and bring our full passionate, creative human souls, with all their urgencies and unnamed longings, right inside the office with us. When Whyte, who often consults for corporate clients, walks into an organization, it is not just to advise, strategize, and make recommendations. Instead, he clarifies our personal--not organizational--difficulties at work by placing them in the age-old context of poetry and story. To follow Whyte through his brilliant, soulful discussion is to raft the turbulent stream of conflicting currents that make up our lives in American organizations.
Whyte uses poetry to bring to life the experience of change itself. When he retells the story of Beowulf, he shows us how to face the nightmares that intrude into even the most organized workplace, nightmares we face in the demands, conversations, and relationships that make up our work life. He shows how to say what we mean and stand by it, even in the face of hostile authority--based on how poets William Blake, Rainer Maria Rilke, and T. S. Eliot lived their beliefs--in the simplest of words. He reveals how power must be built on vulnerability, how innocence cannot be sacrificed to experience, how creativity is the art of wedding simplicity and clarity with chaos.
Now available in paperback with an all new user's guide, The Heart Aroused shows how to use the language of prophecy, poetry, and enlightenment to give voice and strength to our most creative but most hidden desires.
Born in England, David Whyte is one of the few poets to have taken his perspectives on creativity into the field of organizational development, where he works with many American and international companies. He has published several audio collections and three books of poetry.
SOUL
But what is soul, and what is meant by the preservation of the soul? By definition, soul evades the cage of definition. It is the indefinable essence of a person's spirit and being. It can never be touched and yet the merest hint of its absence causes immediate distress. In a work situation, its lack can be sensed intuitively, though a person may, at the same moment, be powerless to know what has caused the loss. It may be the transfer of a well-loved colleague to another department, a change of rooms to a less appealing office, or, more seriously, the inner intuitions of a path not taken. Though the Oxford English Dictionary's lofty attempt at soul is the principle of life in man or animals, depth-psychologist James Hillman describes it in far more eloquent terms in his provocative book of selected writings, A Blue Fire:
To understand soul we cannot turn to science for a description. Its meaning is best given by its context...words long associated with the soul amplify it further: mind, spirit, heart, life, warmth, humanness, personality, individuality, intentionality, essence, innermost purpose, emotion, quality, virtue, morality, sin, wisdom, death, God. A soul is said to be "troubled," "old," "disembodied," "immortal," "lost," "innocent," "inspired." Eyes are said to be "soulless" by showing no mercy. The soul has been imaged as...given by God and thus divine, as conscience, as a multiplicity and as a unity in diversity, as a harmony, as a fluid, as fire, as dynamic energy, and so on...the search for the soul leads always into the "depths."
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| View all 7 comments |
Amazon.com (MSL quote), USA
<2008-03-21 00:00>
The call for increased creativity in the workplace brings with it a concomitant challenge: how will the world of cool professionalism stand up to the inevitable heat and volatility that accompanies people's emotional and spiritual lives? It is problematic to assume, poet David Whyte explains, that you can ask people to create and also to behave. The Heart Aroused explores these and related issues in an inspiring, grounded, thought-provoking way, and is the best nonverse book by a poet since Robert Bly's Iron John. Interwoven with carefully selected poems to illustrate Whyte's points, The Heart Aroused is necessary reading for any professional who secretly harbors a poet's soul.
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AudioFile (MSL quote), USA
<2008-03-21 00:00>
This recording promises to bring poetic insights to soul-withering corporate life and to restore creativity and commitment to the workplace. But by rushing through his book in a portentous monotone, poet/consultant David Whyte cheats his listener, his subject and his overly lush, fervid prose. Every edit is audible in his changes of tempo and modulation. As he tires, his diction trips over his swollen tongue. One wonders at the odd repetitions and pronunciations, when he will get to the point and when the next piano bridge will relieve the tedium of listening. For details on Whyte's provocative and important thesis, pass up this tape and read the book. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine |
Booklist (MSL quote), USA
<2008-03-21 00:00>
A corporate analyst who quotes Dante, Yeats, and Blake? Whyte, a maverick business consultant, wends his way through office and board room finding occasions for poetic reflection. The reader who attends to his message may indeed discover that success in business is spiritual, not merely financial, and that time spent in meditating will count for more in the end than time spent tabulating profits and losses. This intuitive rather than rational line of reasoning will mystify--perhaps infuriate--executives hardened to everything except career advancement. But readers willing to lay aside workaday preconceptions will learn ways to look for the hidden patterns of labor and creativity that can give new meaning to corporate employment. While some of Whyte's insights translate almost immediately into more effective office communication and management, many require the slow pondering that leads to fundamental reorientation of vision. Bryce Christensen |
Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and Soul Mates, USA
<2008-03-21 00:00>
The Heart Aroused is truly extraordinary. It brings a poet's ever-deepening imagination to the world of business and work. It steadies us, gives us grounding, and offers profound images for locating our work deep in the soul. The very style of the book presents a new dimension of language and reflection, with a contemplative tempo, that could help us radically and fruitfully reimagine the workplace. |
View all 7 comments |
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