Tweetspeak Poetry

  • Home
  • FREE prompts
  • Earth Song
  • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Books, Etc.
  • Patron Love

Poets and Poems: David Whyte and “The Bell and the Blackbird”

By Glynn Young 2 Comments

Lagoon Reeds David Whyte

David Whyte is my unexpected workplace godfather.

Whyte, a poet, consultant, speaker, and even tour guide, published a book in 1996 called The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America. He asked a question that no one else was asking at the time: Can poetry save the corporate soul?

My experience at the time was workplace convulsion after workplace convulsion, the bad and the good of the old ways swept out, replaced by what was often and only the bizarre. And I mean bizarre — meditation rooms (bring your own pillow), senior executives playing with Legos, wandering minstrel and choral groups serenading employees in their offices, self-directed employees (like the one who decided a great job was to read novels for seven hours a day and teach them for an hour at lunch in the corporate cafeteria).

The Heart Aroused David WhyteWhyte and his books (The Heart Aroused was followed by Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity) helped me navigate what was happening, using poetry as a rudder. In addition to his business-oriented books, he had also published poetry, collections like Where Many Rivers Meet (1990), Fire in the Earth (1992), and The House of Belonging (1996). He’s published several more since then.

Whyte is still consulting and still writing poetry. His latest collection is The Bell and the Blackbird, published in July. This one is vintage Whyte — quiet poems, a consciousness of the natural world, and a well-ordered mind often considering a less-than-well-ordered universe. He includes poems written to specific friends, so well observed and gentle that they seem almost love poems. He writes in memory of the dead, including a poem about a friend who commits suicide. He writes about place, too, like Ireland and Australia, the Nakasendo trail region of Japan, and the moorland of his native Britain. (Whyte and his family live in the Pacific Northwest now.)

Whyte writes long poems and short poems, all of them reflecting a practiced eye and a heart that, if not aroused, is at least awake and aware. This poem, for example, sounds like one of his Nakasendo poems, but it’s placed in a different section.

Bow

The Bell and the Blackbird David WhyteSeeing you
place that stone
so carefully
on the roadside
shrine,
I inclined my head
to watch it
balance and stay
as you
lifted your hand
so breathlessly
away,
just the slightest
most subtle
inclination
of the head
toward
you,
that afterwards
walking
toward evening
I realized
had been
my bow.

David Whyte

David Whyte

The poem is deceptively simple. Read it the first time, and it’s the poet observing a companion place a stone on a roadside shrine. Read it a second time, and you realize the poet is bending toward his companion in the same way the companion is bending toward the shrine, suggesting a kind of sacred reverence and a depth of relationship far beyond noticing a single act at a shrine. And this understanding is understood not in the moment but later, “walking toward evening,” which could mean the same day or as one’s approaching old age.

Whyte packs a considerable amount of ideas into a few, simple words.

He received a degree in marine zoology, and he holds honorary degrees from Neumann University of Pennsylvania and Royal Roads University in British Columbia. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Said Business School at Oxford University.

The Bell and the Blackbird is a moving collection, full of surprises, simplicity, and depth.

Related:

The Heart Aroused: Chaos and Complexity

Can Poetry Save the Corporate Soul?

Photo by Matt Chinnick, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young, author of  Poetry at Work and the novels Dancing Priest, A Light Shining, Dancing King, and the forthcoming Dancing Prophet. 

Browse more book reviews

__________________________

How to Read a Poem by Tania Runyan How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.

“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”

—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish

Buy How to Read a Poem Now!

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Glynn Young
Glynn Young
Editor and Twitter-Party-Cool-Poem-Weaver at Tweetspeak Poetry
Glynn Young lives in St. Louis where he 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 the Civil War romance Brookhaven, as well as Poetry at Work and the Dancing Priest Series. Find Glynn at Faith, Fiction, Friends.
Glynn Young
Latest posts by Glynn Young (see all)
  • Poets and Poems: Patricia Clark and “O Lucky Day” - May 27, 2025
  • Poets and Poems: L.L. Barkat and “Beyond the Glass” - May 22, 2025
  • A History of Children’s Stories: “The Haunted Wood” by Sam Leith - May 20, 2025

Filed Under: article, book reviews, Books, nature, Nature Poems, Poems, poetry reviews, Poets

Try Every Day Poems...

Comments

  1. Sandra Heska King says

    September 26, 2018 at 8:18 am

    I remember when we worked through The Heart Aroused. Such a good book. This one sounds like it’s right up my alley. And I love the cover!

    Reply
  2. Glynn says

    September 28, 2018 at 10:20 am

    What I really like about Whyte’s poetry is the simplicity of it – a simplicity that only slightly masks the depth behind it.

    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 May Menu

Patron Love

❤️

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

The Graphic Novel

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

meet The Yellow Wallpaper characters

How to Write Poetry

Your Comments

  • Collage: Unwrapping Gifts from the Quiet - Tweetspeak Poetry on Children’s Book Club: The Tale of Despereaux
  • Lucinda Berry Hill on Poetry Prompt: The Phoenix
  • 10 Ways to Help Your Favorite Introverted Author: 1,000 Words - Tweetspeak Poetry on The Joy of Poetry: As Much as She Could Carry
  • Donna Hilbert on Poets and Poems: L.L. Barkat and “Beyond the Glass”

Featured In

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

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Stay in Touch With Us

Categories

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

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

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

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!

Explore Work From Black Poets

About Us

  • • A Blessing for Writers
  • • 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
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions
  • • The Write to Poetry

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poet-a-Day
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • 50 States Projects
  • • Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Library
  • • Edgar Allan Poe Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • 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

  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

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

Copyright © 2025 Tweetspeak Poetry · FAQ, Disclosure & Privacy Policy