David Whyte – The Conversational Nature of Reality

Krista Tippett talks with the poet David Whyte, in a 2016 conversation for On Being, about the idea under all his work: that reality is conversational, and the only real place is the frontier between what you think is you and what is not. He traces it to two years of attention as a naturalist in the Galápagos, where he found his identity depended on how closely he watched things other than himself. From there: poetry as “language against which you have no defenses,” vulnerability as something we can only choose how to inhabit, grief for his friend John O’Donohue, genius as the way everything has met in you, and the discipline of asking beautiful questions in unbeautiful moments. He recites “Everything Is Waiting for You” and “Sweet Darkness” from memory.