“With this insightful book, David Whyte offers people in corporate life an opportunity to reach into the forgotten and ignored creative life (their own and the corporation’s) and literally water their souls with it. The result is a very well written book that can truly heal.”—Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PH.D., author of Women Who Run With the Wolves and The Gift of Story Find professional and personal fulfilment through the poetry of both classic and modern masters—now revised and updated Has your work lost its meaning? Have you forgotten the goals you hoped to achieve when you began your career? Are you afraid of pursuing your dreams? In The Heart Aroused , David Whyte brings his unique perspective as poet and consultant to the workplace, showing readers how fulfilling work can be when they face their fears and follow their dreams. Going beneath the surface concerns about products and profits, organization and order, Whyte addresses the needs of the heart and soul, and the fears and desires that many workers keep hidden. At a time when corporations are calling on employees for more creativity, dedication, and adaptability, and workers are trying desperately to balance home and work, this revised edition of The Heart Aroused is the essential guide to reinvigorating the soul. The call for increased creativity in the workplace brings with it a concomitant challenge: how will the world of cool professionalism stand up to the inevitable heat and volatility that accompanies people's emotional and spiritual lives? It is problematic to assume, poet David Whyte explains, that you can ask people to create and also to behave. The Heart Aroused explores these and related issues in an inspiring, grounded, thought-provoking way, and is the best nonverse book by a poet since Robert Bly's Iron John . Interwoven with carefully selected poems to illustrate Whyte's points, The Heart Aroused is necessary reading for any professional who secretly harbors a poet's soul. " The Heart Aroused is truly extraordinary. It brings a poet's ever-deepening imagination to the world of business and work. It steadies us, gives us grounding, and offers profound images for locating our work deep in the soul. The very style of the book presents a new dimension of language and reflection, with a contemplative tempo, that could help us radically and fruitfully reimagine the workplace." -Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and Soul Mates "David Whyte's images resonate to the core. As a poet who has taken his work into the corporate world, he pioneers a vision that is at once practical and illuminating." -Marion Woodman, Jungian analyst and author of Leaving My Father's House "With this insightful book, David Whyte offers people in corporate life an opportunity to reach into the forgotten and ignored creative life… and literally water their souls with it. The result is a… book that can truly heal." -Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., author of Women Who Run with the Wolves When The Heart Aroused appeared in hardcover in November 1994, it left readers clamoring for author David Whyte as he crisscrossed the country on the lecture circuit with bestselling authors Clarissa Pinkola Estes ( Women Who Run with the Wolves ) and Thomas Moore ( Care of the Soul ). Now available in Currency paperback, The Heart Aroused is poised to reach a new wave of readers. In this peerless book, Whyte shows how the language of prophecy, poetry, and enlightenment give voice to the most creative--yet hidden--desires. He shows that the best way to respond to the current call for creativity in organizational life is to overcome habitual fear and reticence and bring full, passionate, creative human souls, with all their urgencies and unnamed longings, right inside the office. When Whyte, who often consults for corporate clients, walks into an organization, it is not just to advise, strategize, and make recommendations. Instead, he clarifies personal--not organizational--difficulties at work by placing them in the age-old context of poetry and story. To follow Whyte through his brilliant, soulful discussions is to raft the turbulent stream of conflicting currents that make up people's lives inside American organizations. Only a poet could produce such a provocative analysis of today's widespread disenchantment with business--or such a daring prescription for using the classics of poetry to revitalize the soul of corporate America.The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of theSoul in Corporate America by David Whyte. Copyright © 1994 by DavidWhyte. In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost -DANTE Like Dante, many of today's corporate workers find themselves lost in the day-to-day duties of their jobs. Our lives seem shaken by the events of September 11 and the seemingly endless examples of corporate scandal, it's become more difficult than ever to find meaning in the workpla