River Flow: New & Selected Revised Edition

by David Whyte

Overview

Poet David Whyte's body of work reflects the depth and breadth of a maturing artist, taking its readers on a passage through time and place, allowing us to bear witness to the constellation of difficulties, triumphs, adventures, losses, hopes and revelations that have shaped one particular human life. Whether writing of his Yorkshire childhood, trekking in the Himalayas, youthful partings in the mountains of South America, fireside talks on a Welsh farm with a friend with a passion for Blake, or the Ireland of his mother's heart, David Whyte's poems have their feet planted firmly in the natural world, simultaneously inviting us to join him on the path and admonishing us to get down on our hands and knees in the thicket and find our own way.

River Flow contains over one hundred poems selected from five previously published works, together with 23 new poems, including a tribute to an Ethiopian woman navigating her first escalator, a meditation of love and benediction for his young daughter, and a cycle of Irish poems that convey his deep love of the land and life-long appreciation for its wisdom. These are poems to be read and reread, poems that are sure to become companions on your own passage through the turbulent waters of a well-lived, well-loved life.

This newly revised edition contains the most up to date versions of poems from David's first five volumes of poetry: Songs for Coming Home, Where Many Rivers Meet, Fire in the Earth, The House of Belonging and Everything is Waiting for You, as well as the latest versions of the new poems that originally appeared in the first edition of River Flow.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940016219554
Publisher:	Many Rivers Press
Publication date:	09/01/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	818 KB

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 seven 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 perspectives on Conversational Leadership.

Editorial Reviews

His poems strip away the distracting demands of work or technological life to get at the primal experiences that have often been obscured in the modern world and which are renewed through poetry ... Whyte writes more clearly in the tradition of William Wordsworth than almost any other contemporary poet, though his poems also nod to more recent practitioners in the same line, such as Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney.

Pedestal Magazine - James Owens

At times gentle and peaceful, at other times, turbulent and thundering, River Flow is a magnificent collection of poetry with a vibrant voice. {...} David Whyte has a confident command of words, causing them to leap with emotion while drawing vivid pictures in the mind. His poems touch several dimensions of thought, from the spiritual realm to the tangible world around us. The profound and the poignant take on a heightened perception when seen through the author's eyes.

In the Library Reviews - Joyce Handzo