Fire in the Earth [Paperback]

David Whyte (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: Many Rivers Pr (January 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0962152420
• ISBN-13: 978-0962152429
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #259,264 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Poet David Whyte grew up with a strong, imaginative influence from his Irish mother among the hills and valleys of his father's Yorkshire. He now makes his home, with his family, in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The author of six books of poetry and three books of prose, David Whyte holds a degree in Marine Zoology and has traveled extensively, including living and working as a naturalist guide in the Galapagos Islands and leading anthropological and natural history expeditions in the Andes, the Amazon and the Himalaya. He brings this wealth of experience to his poetry, lectures and workshops.

His life as a poet has created a readership and listenership in three normally mutually exclusive areas: the literate world of readings that most poets inhabit, the psychological and theological worlds of philosophical enquiry and the world of vocation, work and organizational leadership.

An Associate Fellow at Templeton College and Said Business School at the University of Oxford, he is one of the few poets to take his perspectives on creativity into the field of organizational development, where he works with many European, American and international companies. In spring of 2008 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Neumann College, Pennsylvania.

In organizational settings, using poetry and thoughtful commentary, he illustrates how we can foster qualities of courage and engagement; qualities needed if we are to respond to today's call for increased creativity and adaptability in the workplace. He brings a unique and important contribution to our understanding of the nature of individual and organizational change particularly through his unique perspectives on Conversational Leadership.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

90 of 135 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New Prophecy From the Rosy Fire, April 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Fire in the Earth (Paperback)

David Whyte's FIRE IN THE EARTH is rival knowledge for anyone whose belief system excludes the Mystery. And rival it must, taking the reader on a journey through several paths renegotiating the usual ontological arguments of our birth, being, becoming and eventual death as humans.

He begins by smashing the prophetic crystal ball of our culture and naming the existential fear of unknowing and alientation from a collective vision of moving forward together. He then substitutes a pattern of spiralling fire - super nova - as the original spark igniting a rival vision of the potential human.

Framing his argument in triple lines, Whyte's technique introduces a slippage that brings another vision into the centre challenging our identity and strategies for safety fending off our fear of the unknown. Having dismissed with fire imagery that warms, comforts and protects, he confronts and coaxes us to come into the fire of transformation by blocking our exit back he convinces us to give up the old habitual patterns of self-destruction, addiction and bargaining.

Here in this transformative fire, we are humbled by our own small vision, the one true path. Whyte invokes the idea of desire which is not owning or clinging to possessions, rather this desire is freeing. "Now the path of leaving is the path" he says, meaning, I think, that paradox is fuelling the fire of the "I" vision - the way foward becomes "faith in no path where there is no faith at all." The soul's light then explodes onto the page forging us a glimmer of the longings, desires and wants that arise from the original fire of our begetting.

And yet, in spite of all the fireworks, the path is not illumined and the journey falters once again. What is required on this journey is a "feral act of courage" to make a voluntary "fall" into the fire of desire. Here in that ex nihlio moment of becoming an enlightened human being from nothing a new prophecy is awakened from within the heart of the body, in the image of the fiery rose.

This book is a transcendent vision of a journey of rebirth into Eros, vision, the beloved, relationship with the sacred and the inner fire of the Mystery. It has gotten me through many a long, dark night of the soul.