The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America

The poet needs the practicalities of making a living to test and temper the lyricism of insight and observation. The corporation needs the poet’s insight and powers of attention to weave the inner world of soul and creativity with the outer world of form and matter.

A famous Zen master, while weighing flax on a scale, was once asked the meaning of Zen by a student. Without taking his concentrated eyes off the scale, he adjusted the weights and said, “Three pounds of flax.”

THE LEADEN EYED Let not young souls be smothered out before They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride. It is the world’s sore crime its babes grow dull, Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden eyed. Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly, Not that they sow, but they seldom reap. Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve Not that

Out of an overwhelming fire that threatens to consume us we take a small ember that warms and emboldens. This process is at the heart of poetic inspiration and the poetic imagination; it gives equal place to the tiny act as the greater pattern and demands that we stop choosing between the small actions that make up the everyday and the great sweeps

In my experience, the more true we are to our own creative gifts the less there is any outer reassurance or help at the beginning. The more we are on the path, the deeper the silence in the first stages of the process. Following our path is in effect a kind of going off the path, through open country. There is a certain early stage when we are left

There is an ancient Chinese story of an old master potter who attempted to develop a new glaze for his porcelain vases. It became the central focus of his life. Every day he tended the flames of his kilns to a white heat, controlling the temperature to an exact degree. Every day he experimented with the chemistry of the glazes he applied, but still

The man who cannot simply close his eyes knowing there is image after image far inside him, waiting quietly until night to rise all around him in the dark it’s all finished for him, he’s just like an old man.

though the world will never be simple, a life that honors the soul seems to have a kind of radical simplicity at the center of it.

the soul finds its existence through a loss of control to those powers greater than human experience.