How Poetry Changes the Way We See the World with David Whyte

**David Whyte** (0:00)
If you get human beings together, if you're having to pass bad news to someone else about a diagnosis, about a death, about something tragic that's happened, you will fall into poetic rhythm, actually, as you're speaking. And you will often repeat things three times. So poetry is not an abstract art form. It's actually how humans speak when they're on their intimate, emotional, intellectual and imaginative edge, trying to say something that cannot be said. And that might break your heart if you find it out, if you hear it.

**Guy Kawasaki** (0:39)
Good morning, everybody. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People podcast. And we have a remarkable poet today for you.
And you could probably guess by just saying I have a remarkable poet, that it is the David Whyte. And he's a poet, a philosopher, a performer. Many of you may know him from his book here called Consolations. And he has version two of Consolations, which appropriately is called Consolations II.
Let's just dive straight into it, David. Welcome to Remarkable People.

**David Whyte** (1:15)
Very good to be here with you, Guy.

**Guy Kawasaki** (1:17)
So I got to tell you, David, that my wife has been to three or four of your Asilomar appearances, and she just raves about them. She loves it. She loves the poetry.
She loves just the drama and the passion and the emotion. But a funny story, she told me that she really loves how you do this, where you recite a poem and I think she heard you forget a line. But the audience are such David Whyte evangelists that they know the whole poem, so they recite the line for you when you forgot it. She thought that was just the cutest thing that you can laugh at yourself like that.

**David Whyte** (1:56)
Well, it takes a village.
It's certainly true of my older poems. It might not be true of the more recent ones that I've written. But it used to be a big thing in Russia, actually. Russian poets would do all of their readings from memory in the old days. Pasternak, who was known in Russia as a poet rather than the novelist of Dr. Shivago, he had a bad memory by Russian standards, and people would be continually shouting out his lines in the audience. And it's a really powerful reminder that poetry is often working with things that we already know, metaphorically as well as literally, that we just need to be reminded about in a very, very physical way, because you're actually being reintroduced to the physical experience. Bad poetry is in the abstract, bad prose, yeah, bad speech, but good speech, good poetry is an invitation into the experience itself. It's not about something. So that's the whole feeling behind that dynamic.
And yeah, Silimar, it's a group of beautiful wooden buildings on the side of Monterey Bay. You can hear the waves coming in from the stage, actually. I have Irish musicians there, my daughter sings. There's a kind of family feeling about it. And it's just a remarkable place to catch up with yourself, actually. And you could say that's the dynamic of poetry and good prose.

**Guy Kawasaki** (3:25)
Yeah. Well, my wife said that it used to be in January, which was the perfect month because everybody's recovering from Christmas and the holidays. So now you can just replenish yourself in January.

**David Whyte** (3:38)
Yes, exactly. Yeah.

**Guy Kawasaki** (3:42)
So I'm curious, you know, the arc of your life, how do you start as a marine zoologist and end up as a poet?

**David Whyte** (3:49)
Yes, I didn't begin as a marine zoologist, actually, Guy. I've written and been drawn to poetry since I was seven years old or so, or perhaps even younger with my mother. Sat at the bottom of my bed reciting poetry in Irish and English. So I grew up in the north of England, but I grew up of an Irish mother, a very Irish mother, actually, and she had the magic of speech. She had a magic singing voice too, actually. So I was enchanted and enchanted by this legacy and this sense of things being passed down. I remember once hearing in my mother's voice, she was telling a story about her grandmother, and I was only five years old or so, but I suddenly heard my mother's mother's mother's voice. Yeah, in my mother. And I remember that was a life changing experience for me, that a voice could stay alive, generation after generation. So in poetry, I recognized the art form really that carried that ability in human beings to hold something precious through all the difficulties and traumas and passing downs of human life. So I started writing when I was seven. I wrote seriously from when I was 12 or 13