Can Poetry Save the Corporate Soul?

It was 1996. I was in a bookstore, likely the Barnes & Noble not far from my house. I spotted a small book with an unexpected title: The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America. The author, David Whyte, was a poet. His book wasn’t about how poetry might apply in the workplace, but how critically important poetry was if corporate America was to flourish and succeed.

Poetry?

I bought the book. I read it cover to cover. Three times. No book Published by man has had as profound an impact on my and how I understand the workplace as The Heart Aroused. “The poet needs the practicalities of making a living to test and temper the lyricism of insight and observation,” Whyte said. “The corporation needs the poet’s insight and powers of attention in order to weave the inner world of soul and creativity with the outer world of form and matter.”

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