POEM ABOUT GIVING, David Whyte on GIVING from Consolations 2014

GIVING (an extract) page 83 Consolations 2014 by David Whyte

is a difficult and almost contemplative art form that can only be done well through practice; to learn to give is almost always the simple, sometimes heartbreaking act of just giving again. To stop giving in any situation is to call an end to relationship.
Giving is an essence of existence, and a test of our character; it asks deep questions about our relationship to others, to ourselves and strangely, to time itself: all gifts change with the maturation of their recipients.
To give well, appropriately and often is to establish a beautiful seasonal symmetry between the urgency within us that wishes to be generous, and the part of the world that is suddenly surprised and happy to receive.
To give generously but appropriately and then, most difficult of all, and as the full apotheosis of the art, with feeling, in the moment and spontaneously, has always been recognized as one of the greatest of human qualities.

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David Whyte is an Anglo-Irish poet. He has said that all of his poetry and philosophy are based on "the conversational nature of reality". His book The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America topped the best-seller charts in the United States.

Whyte has written ten volumes of poetry and four books of prose. Pilgrim is based on the human need to travel, "From here to there".The House of Belonging looks at the same human need for home. He describes his collection Everything Is Waiting For You (2003) as arising from the grief at the loss of his mother.Pilgrim was published in May 2012. His latest book is Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, an attempt to "rehabilitate" many everyday words we often use only in pejorative or unimaginative ways.He has also written for newspapers, including The Huffington Post and The Observer.He leads group poetry and walking journeys regularly in Ireland, England and Italy.[9]

Whyte has an honorary degree from Neumann College, Pennsylvania, and from Royal Roads University, British Columbia, and is Associate Fellow of both Templeton College, Oxford, and Saïd Business School, Oxford.

Whyte has spent a portion of every year for the last twenty-five years in County Clare, Ireland. Over the years and over a number of volumes of poetry he has built a cycle of poems that evoke many of the ancient pilgrimage sites of The Burren mountains of North Clare and of Connemara.