Customer Reviews

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

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The Heart Aroused is a book about the state of the soul in the corporate workplace, written by an English poet. If you've ever wondered "Am I the only one who is miserable here?" or "Do others feel they can't speak the truth?" or "Are others being smothered here as well?", you will love this book. Yes - others feel these things. This book says what no one will articulate: it IS hard to speak the truth (or gain one's own voice) in the corporate workplace, it IS hard to maintain one's integrity and BE oneself, it IS hard to be healthy and happy in this environment. But Whyte does not advocate heading for the hills - he feels the corporate workplace can be transformed (with effort) by more awareness on the part of both management and workers. He DOES see the good points of corporations (as efficiency). He, himself, goes into corporations giving workshops on this subject. He ends by mentioning that we spend most of our waking hours at work, so it is a matter of our health, on every level, how we are able to function, what kind of conditions surround us, and what the goals of the corporation are. As a work of beauty, as a book that reinforces what so many people feel, and as something that provokes thought, I highly recommend this book.

Frankly, I found this to be an especially demanding book even when reading it for a second time. Whyte requires of his reader a rigorous as well as truthful self-exploration, and in ways and to an extent few other authors do. As is so often true in other dimensions of human experience, the benefits derived from reading his book are almost wholly dependent upon how much is personally invested in it. As Whyte explains, he wrote this book "hoping it would be read in two ways. First, as a good story about the difficulties and dramas of preserving the soul at work -- in short, a page-turner; second, as a book that could be studied, contemplated, and discussed with others." More than 50 years ago, Mortimer Adler affirmed the value of reading the "great books" because they stimulate and enrich what he called "a conversation across the centuries." I think this is what Whyte has in mind when providing, in the book's final section (a "User's Guide"), a number of thoughts for reflection and discussion as well as for self-questioning. For example: "What is my heart's desire in life? What are some of the particularities of the way I like to live? What are the essential qualities that give me a sense of belonging? How can work be a good servant to my essential nature instead of a taskmaster?" As I now reflect on this book after a second reading, I think its greatest value lies not only in the truth of what Whyte expresses so eloquently but also in what his assertions and questions require his readers to consider as they seek spiritual fulfillment in their own lives. Those who my high regard for this book are urged to read Whyte's other books, especially Crossing the Unknown: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity and Fire in the Earth; also, to check out David Maister's Practice What You Preach and Tim Sanders' Love Is the Killer App as well as Eliyahu M. Goldratt's The Goal, Critical Acclaim, and It's Not Luck.

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.

David Whyte is a fine writer and this book is a noteworthy contribution to the literature on how to bring creativity and soul not only into the corporate world, but into each of our lives. He works hard at underscoring the symbolic importance of his literary references to Beowulf, Coleridge and Eliot, among others, and writes for readers who might not otherwise be poetically inclined. A Heart Aroused argues very simply that each of us owe it to ourselves to bring courage and passion into our work and into our lives. If we cannot embrace the job with passion, perhaps we are in the wrong job. He discusses the fear and voicelessness that so often dominate tough corporate environments, and the troubling compromises that each of us make as we struggle to balance many pressures and demands. When these compromises become too severe, he argues, we begin to slip into a comatose mode of life and lose our edge and our passion for quality and good service. But this is not an easy issue -- some will be tempted to counter that practical concerns are not easily set aside when family and career are at stake. Many a corporate person battens down the hatches and seeks to weather the storms below deck rather than experience the exhileration of being fully engaged in overcoming crises and challenges, when failure can lead to such devastating results. Quite frankly, there are times and situations when we are not welcomed by those in power to engage these challenges. The goal of all good managers and CEOs, Whyte is saying, is to turn their companies into soul friendly environments, for only then will their employees and their products reach their full potential. To not heed the soul, Whyte argues, is even more dangerous than risking the ire of power, because then, rather than being killed despite our best efforts, we kill ourselves and become passive victims rather than actors in the drama. A beginning to an important discussion, but not as concrete as it could be on managing such abstract ideas in our every day world. What he is saying, in an eloquent way, is that we must each be true to our souls, to ourselves, if we are ever to experience true joy in our work and our lives. Not a new idea, but one thoughtfully put forward here.

The author had a very interesting and insightful interview on Public Radio which prompted me to purchase and read this book. I run a small software company; the exertion definitely affects the perspective of meaning in my life. Whyte's book has been very helpful to me in sorting out how important an influence work has on one's soul.

It seems to me that our understanding of meaning (insert satisfaction, growth, personal development, reward, or any other value...) is too often clouded by a confusion of the importance our careers have in manifesting what we are and who we want to be.

Whyte does us a service by sharing with us the value of a broad, soul-searching quest -- through our work -- using poetry. Through repetition of references to Beowolf and other poems, he uses marvelous, concise prose to describe what the soul really needs: meaning through spriritual struggle by nurturing deep feelings of self-doubt. We must lose our way in order to find ourselves; there is no other way to awaken.

Unfortunately, I cannot summarize how one awakes to find himself or herself through the focused life-long energy expended in careers. Whyte's book illustrates a number of paradoxes that should be examined.

If your soul is in need of sustenance, this wonderful book will nourish. I highly recommend it. It is one of the very few non-technical books I keep in my office.

This is the book for you, if you feel like you are losing your soul in the midst of the dark Corporate wood. If you've ever been asked to fire someone who was doing a good job, or if your knee-jerk response to your boss is 'yes' and that still bothers you, read 'The Heart Aroused'. If you agree with, "Work almost always becomes a platform for self-righteous moralizing. So much is at stake...", read 'The Heart Aroused'. If you have inspirational posters from Hallmark or the Franklin Planner folks on your office walls, it's probably too late to read this book. I'm sorry, but you've already lost your soul.

Amazing insight into the human soul and how the corporate workplace has evolved to stifle personal identity, creativity, and the joy associated with work. More than that, Whyte skillfully and poetically provides the philosophical framework for reuniting the worker with the workplace. Using references from great literature, parables, poetry and prose, and drawing from the great diversity of humanity, Whyte opens a path by which we can regain the joy of working creatively. A book to read, and read again, just to learn how to grow spiritually and remain human at work.

An excellent book seeking to explain the nature of the link between a person's creativity and their work. That the two must be maintained in an equilibrium, each nourishing the other, if either is to become a quality experience leading to a quality product. The nature of the dilemma he describes might have been less obscure had he called it a conflict between honor and selfrespect. The term "Honor" (External)describing the various benefits that accrue from work and the term "Self Respect" (Internal) describing how we feel about ourselves after the compromise and sacrice that are often necessary. At a level below this is the font of our creativity (Sexual energy)welling up from our souls. It is most unusual to read an author who descends to this level, for here are forces that defy direct perception and can only be vaguely perceived through poetic and artistic expression. He also dares to confront the struggle between a persons male and female selves. The story of the shopkeeper in "Taking the Homeward Road," is in itself worth the reading of the book and contains wonderful insight as well as some good advice. The book causes you to look at aspects of yourself you might not have considered and it will open doors that might otherwise go unnoticed.

This book is already on the way to becoming a well known classic now but I first encountered it in a very private and personal way at a crucial time in my life when it first appeared a few years ago. I felt very thankful then that someone had been able to speak to the hidden qualities of my work life and set me on more of a courageous path as a result. Having just reread it I realize now why it had such a profound effect on me: The Heart Aroused really does speak to a person whatever threshold of life they might find themselves on. A hearty recommendation then to anyone wondering about the hopes raised by the title, it more than fullfils its promise.

David Whyte's soulful stories and poetry have opened up to me much of troubled me about my relationship to work and the other things in life that matter.

One of his stories, that of a shop keeper who upon finding a dead body lying across the door to his shop one morning is my story.

The dead body is a metaphor for himself in his younger years, dead to what really matters in life. He flees, leaving his wife and family to take up work as the servant of a wise man. (again a metaphor for those of us who devote most of our time and energy to work and career and pay little attention to our loved ones.)

Twenty years later in mid-life he can't stand the separation any more and asking for his wages (takes an offer and early retirement) heads out to return to his family.

After paying an enormous sum to his former master for advice that seems cliched, he finds that this advice is life saving on his journey home.

Each piece of advice relates to the path we need to take to return to a healthy life after years of selling our souls to the corporate world and creating a life that we can barely stand to return to day in and day out.