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Consolations
David Whyte
Fifty-two short prose meditations, each taking an ordinary word — Alone, Anger, Hiding, Procrastination, Work — and turning it slowly in the light until it yields an unexpected meaning. David Whyte, a poet by trade, writes to rehabilitate the everyday vocabulary we usually deploy carelessly or dismissively: procrastination reimagined as a necessary ripening, shyness as the first tremor of revelation. The pieces are lyrical, unhurried, and quietly consoling — closer to secular prayer than to self-help, though they live near that border. For readers who like language savored rather than rushed, and who want a book that can be opened anywhere, a page at a time, it has become a much-loved companion.
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The author
David Whyte is an internationally known poet who makes his home in the Pacific Northwest and lectures widely, often bringing poetry into unexpected rooms — including the corporate and organizational world (he is an associate fellow of Oxford's Saïd Business School). A biographical detail that quietly shapes his sensibility: he holds a degree in marine zoology, and the naturalist's patient attention shows in how he examines a single word.
The book
Published by Many Rivers Press — Whyte's own imprint — in 2014, with later printings; this is the revised edition. The fifty-two entries run from "Alone" to "Work," each a self-contained essay of a few pages.
How it has aged
It has become one of Whyte's signature books and a widely gifted one, later joined by a sequel, Consolations II. Skeptics find the register occasionally too smooth or aphoristic; its many admirers return to it precisely for that balm. Either way it has settled onto the modern shelf of wisdom literature.
For more context
Whyte's poetry (The House of Belonging) and his essays in Crossing the Unknown Sea; and the kindred tradition of the word-meditation.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- David Whyte
- Publisher
- Many Rivers Press
- Place of publication
- Langley, Washington
- Year
- 2015
- Edition
- Revised edition
- ISBN
- 978-1-932887-36-5
- Shelf
- Poetry
- Location
- Maine