Favoritie Poet David Whyte on SOUNDS TRUE: 'Insights at the Edge'

Sounds True: Insights at the Edge ("beautiful mercies")
Listen to David Whyte sage-in-the-modern-age talking with Tami Simon of Sounds True about originality, being on the frontier of human experience, and 'exile as a core human competency'.

This guy is phenomenal to me. I first encountered him years ago at Natural Products Expo West; a keynote presenter in the early morning breakfast session. Despite the early hour, all seats were full and I slipped into a standing room only scene. The first thing he did in that setting, after reading the very first poem, was to coach us not to clap. David Whyte has a beautiful way of pausing at the end of a poem then repeating the last line or the last verse. That trait, combined with absence of clapping invites something profound to occur; let it in, let it in, let it in.... (I let it in and it reverberated as well it should).

I took this treasure home in the form of a CD and over time we acquired more of his recordings. We listened and listened and listened, as we carefully poured our beeswax candles. We liked to say that the candles we delivered were happily imbued with all that profundity.

"It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there." William Carlos Williams

David is utterly masterful at getting folk to re-focus in to a broader landscape, so that what is standing in the way of their real life can move to its rightful place in the core hierarchy of needs.

David Whyte's newest offering:

What to Remember When Waking: The Disciplines of Every Day Life.