• Home
  • Poetry Prompts
  • For Writers
  • Daily Poem-Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Free Stuff + BOOKS
  • Patron Love

Poetry at Work: What Poetry Brings to Business

By Glynn Young 1 Comment

For some 15 years, roughly 1996 to 2010, poet David Whyte was the missionary of poetry to business. And he was a very specific kind of missionary for poetry, as the subtitle of his book The Heart Aroused suggests: “Poetry and the Preservation of the Corporate Soul in America.” For Whyte, poetry could be not only a compass and guide for business but also something more than that, perhaps even a way to do business or preserve its soul.

In 2010, Clare Morgan, director of the graduate writing center at the university of Oxford, published What Poetry Brings to Business, coauthored with Kirsten Lange and Ted Buswick of the Boston Consulting Group. Morgan’s book doesn’t actually challenge Whyte’s for preeminence; in fact, she doesn’t even mention him or The Heart Aroused. She’s English and he’s Welsh; it might be one of those intra-Britain rivalry things (although Whyte moved to America).

Whyte used various and well known literary works, such as Beowulf, to discuss how poetry applied to the corporate soul. And The Heart Aroused is written like a poet would write it, with beautiful language and a narrative that appeals to the literary part of the mind.

Morgan uses literary works as well, some well known (like Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”) and some not so well known. She approaches her subject in an effective combination of academic and business styles, utilizing such familiar business concepts as “business processes” and case studies.

And she covers her subject from about every perspective imaginable, including how poetry can help you think beyond facts; how poetry and business share major themes; how poetry can apply to business decision making; how poetry can increase business creativity; and how poetry applies to business values, like corporate social responsibility. It’s a fascinating read to see concepts and practices of poetry packaged and explained for business consumption–case studies, practical exercises, team projects, and examples of her own seminars for businesses and business groups.

Early on, Morgan comes close to Whyte when she says this: “Precision is vital to a poet, precision of language, of image, of nuance, of tone. But the indirection poetry deals in has to do with the rejection of ‘facts’ as the basis of its utterance. A poet isn’t trying to tell you something. He isn’t trying to tell you anything. The poet is taking you on a journey of exploration, and where you arrive in the end, and the nature of the journey, will be different for each person. There are no maps, no certainties.”

Much of what business is about is maps and certainties. The modern corporation was created in part to reduce uncertainty (and risk). What business has been learning for the past 30 years is that there are no certainties, and precious few maps. And poetry might suggest ways forward, or at least how to think going forward.

Both Whyte and Morgan’s approaches see poetry as something that exists outside of business, a entity separate from the day-to-day reality of business and work. Whyte would use poetry to preserve the corporate soul; Morgan would apply poetry directly to how business is done. If there is a shortcoming in both approaches, it is that neither really considers that poetry might already exist in business and work, largely ignored and unrecognized but just as vital to the ongoing operation and success of what we call work.

 Photograph by Jason Samfield. Sourced via Flickr. Poetry at Work™ post by Glynn Young, author of the novels Dancing Priest and the recently published A Light Shining.

________________

Buy a year of happy work mornings today, just $5.99. In January we’re exploring the theme Coffee and Tea.

Every Day Poems Driftwood

 

Poetry at Work-Hot

Now you can easily follow our new Poetry at Work posts. Add one of our Poetry at Work badges to your blog or website today!

Click for more badge options

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Glynn Young
Follow Glynn
Glynn Young
Editor and Twitter-Party-Cool-Poem-Weaver at Tweetspeak Poetry
Glynn Young lives in St. Louis where he recently retired as the team leader for Online Strategy & Communications for a Fortune 500 company. Glynn writes poetry, short stories and fiction, and he loves to bike. He is the author of Poetry at Work and the Dancing Priest Series. Find Glynn at Faith, Fiction, Friends.
Glynn Young
Follow Glynn
Latest posts by Glynn Young (see all)
  • A Book of Poetry by Edna St. Vincent Millay Finds Its Way Home - January 19, 2021
  • Poets and Poems: Troy Cady and “Featherdusting the Moon” - January 12, 2021
  • How J.R.R. Tolkien Met an Obligation – with Poetry - January 5, 2021

Related

❤️✨ Sharing is caring

Filed Under: article, poetry and business, Poetry at Work, poetry reviews

Comments

  1. L.L. Barkat says

    January 22, 2013 at 5:32 pm

    Love the comparisons/contrasts.

    Am thinking it would be cool if you used some of Morgan’s materials with us here 🙂

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our January Menu.

Keep the World Poetic

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world thoughtful and poetic.

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Join the Poetry Club

Join the poetry club, when you become a subscriber to Every Day Poems ✨

The classic—Now a Graphic Novel!

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

Recent Comments

  • Jody Collins on How Blogging Works for Writers: Think Seasons
  • Bethany R. on Poetry Club Tea Date ✨ Kissed
  • Megan D. Willome on How Blogging Works for Writers: Think Seasons
  • Sandra Heska King on Poets and Poems: Troy Cady and “Featherdusting the Moon”

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Join Tweetspeak Poetry

Categories

Explore Work From Black Poets

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

Free Printable Poet Bios

Browse all poet bios now

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

About Us

  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • How to Write Form Poems-Infographics
  • • Poetry Club Tea Date
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • A Ritual to Read to Each Other
  • • Best Love Poetry
  • • Book Club
  • • Children’s Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Literary Analysis
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • VerseWrights Journal
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Give the Gift of Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2021 Tweetspeak Poetry · Site by The Willingham Enterprise · FAQ & Disclosure