The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America

177 Pages·2002·0.99 MB·English

by  David Whyte

Table of Contents

Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Preface to the Revised Edition
1 - The Path Begins

THE POET AND THE CORPORATION

SOUL

THE DIFFICULTY AND DRAMA OF WORK

WORK AND THE SOUL

TURNING OFF THE PATH

2 - Beowulf

DROPPING BENEATH THE SURFACE

STANDING AT THE EDGE

KILLING GRENDEL’S MOTHER

DISCLOSURE AND VULNERABILITY

DISAPPEARANCE AND RETURN

3 - Fire in the Earth

FIRE AND DESIRE

FIRE AND ICE

THE PATH OF FIRE

THE CENTER OF THE FLAME

EMBRACING GRIEF AND JOY

DECIPHERING THE FIRE
JOY IN THE WORK

DROPPING INTO THE SEA

CONTAINED FIRE

4 - Fire in the Voice

FINDING A VOICE

SAYING NO AS A PATH TO SOUL

NO BECOMES YES

5 - Fionn and the Salmon of Knowledge Innocence and Experience in
Corporate America

THE ALIENATION OF INNOCENCE: THE SOUL AT RISK

THE SOUL OUTSIDE OF TIME

INNOCENCE IN THE WORLD OF EXPERIENCE

THE SOUL DECLARES ITSELF

THE DANGERS OF YOUTH WITH YOUTH

THE SOUL CHOOSES ITS TIME

THE SALMON OF KNOWLEDGE

KNOWING BOTH: THE SOUL AND STRATEGY

WANDERING INTO THE CLEARING

6 - Homeward Road - The Soul at Midlife

7 - Coleridge and Complexity

THE STARLINGS

OUR LOVE OF ORDER

THE MANAGER WHO IS NOT

THE CENTER OF THE WHIRLWIND
THE RHYTHMS OF THE HEART

THE IMAGE AS A GATEWAY TO SIMPLICITY

THE IMAGE AS A GATEWAY TO HIDDEN GRIEF

THE IMAGE AS GATEWAY TO HEALING: THE REST BETWEEN THE NOTES

SIMPLICITY AMID COMPLEXITY: THE STRANGE CASE OF THE STRANGE ATTRACTOR

STAYING ALIVE AT WORK

LOST IN THE FOREST

REMEMBERING THE ESSENTIALS

THE BRIGHT-EYED AND THE LEADEN-EYED

THE SECRET OF THE STARLINGS

8 - The Soul of the World

THE INNER VOICE AND THE OUTER WORLD

THE CYCLES. ALL THE OTHER CYCLES.

THE ECOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

COMING OUT OF HIDING

Bibliography
Permissions
About the Author
Other books by David Whyte
Copyright Page
For Peter and Joel, friends, teachers, colleagues, and fellow travelers
Acknowledgments

To Autumn Preble, who displayed, among her many talents, a sure and
instinctive editorial hand, and who with my son, Brendan, provided
understanding, endless cups of tea, and a patience I do not deserve. To my wife,
Leslie Cotter, and my daughter, Charlotte, who have been at my side through its
various translations and revisions. To Peter Block for his sudden, surprising, and
imaginative invitation to work in the organizational world, to Joel Henning, God
bless him, for his stories and his passion, to them both for marvelous inspiration
and good company at the dinner table. To Bennett White, Edward Wates, and
Will Prestwood for their sure friendship and listening ears, for their
companionship on the Cumbrian hills, single malt in the farmhouse at Roger
Ground, and their close reading and comments. To Dana Gioia for his fine and
provocative essay, to my assistant, Julie Quiring, whose efficiency is matched
only by her patience, and who endured constant status reports whether she
wished for them or not, to Priya for her resourceful help with permissions, to my
agent, Ned Leavitt, who has a wisdom and humanity even greater than his talents
as a literary agent, and last to my two editors of the original edition at
Doubleday, Harriet Rubin, who played Fury to my Muse and made the book far
better than anything I could have achieved alone, and Janet Coleman, who
displayed a sure touch in the closing stages. All the above have contributed to
whatever qualities the book may have; its many flaws and omissions are entirely
my own.

Only a few achieve the colossal task of holding together, without being split asunder, the clarity of
their vision alongside an ability to take their place in a materialistic world. They are the modern heroes. . . .
Artists at least have a form within which they can hold their own conflicting opposites together. But there
are some who have no recognized artistic form to serve this purpose, they are artists of the living. To my
mind these last are the supreme heroes in our soulless society.
—IRENE CLAREMONT DE CASTILLEJO
Preface to the Revised Edition

Almost ten years have passed since I first sat down to write an introduction
for the book that was to become The Heart Aroused. I remember that a fine
creative anticipation was soon replaced by a not-so-fine un-creative despair, and
though I experienced brief moments of elation as I wrote on that clear, beautiful
day, by the end of the first attempt I had returned to the true home of the writer,
the familiar ground of complete hopelessness. Three years later the book went to
press bereft of any introduction, it having reinvented itself into the first chapter.
The author went out into the world, too, his own thoughts reinvented by trying to
write something that at first attempt seemed impossible. The impossible task was
to bring together the supposedly strategic world of business with the great
inheritance of the human literary imagination, particularly through that difficult
art, poetry, and particularly through the fierce, unremitting wish for the
dangerous truth that is poetry’s special gift.
I remember disappearing to the west of Ireland when the book first appeared,
no wiser as to whether I had succeeded in those dangerous truths after three
years than I was after the first few pages of writing. When I returned, I saw a tall
stack of letters occupying the very center of my desk. I opened the first with
trepidation; twenty or so letters later, I let myself glimpse the promised land of a
dared satisfaction. Dozens of people had written to acknowledge the book, the
poetry, the description of their struggles, and the possibilities it had granted them
for the future. I remember saying to myself that whatever I had done, I had done
something. Almost a decade later, and printing after printing, the book seems to
have created a community of inquiry, a language that enables people to speak to
dynamics that in the corporate world formerly bullied and rendered powerless
many an individual life. Its continued life on the shelves and its use as a text in
many business schools call for the elimination of references that were topical
mostly to the nineties. I have also touched on the pivotal nature of the September
2001 attacks, expanded the definition of soul, and re-formed and extended the
“Coleridge and Complexity” chapter.
Since the first appearance of The Heart Aroused, we have witnessed the
growth and then implosion of the nineties bubble market, the demise of a
thousand dotcoms, and, more soberly, the destruction of the Twin Towers and
the thousands of working people who died in them. I do believe that these events
have literally grounded us into a reappreciation of work: our expectations are