The Bell and the Blackbird
by David Whyte
53 poems, 135 pages
Price $18.00
ISBN 978-1-932887-47-1
Publisher: Many Rivers Press
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018939048
To Order: www.amazon.com/Bell-Blackbird
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
"The single, full malt taste of something met,
a breathing through in the chest, a way of coming to
and of tasting again, the essence of wanting to live,
something paid for by our seeking and our patience,
just a tang, a hint, a mere breath in the glow light,
of being born again."
The foregoing, excerpted from “Orphan Lamb,” from David Whyte’s new collection, sets the tone not only for this review but in a larger sense for the mission and purpose of Whyte’s life. In a phrase, “born again,” is his mission. Whyte travels the world as an evangelist for the power of poetry to change lives. In a cynical culture where assaults on the soul feel like fingernails on a chalkboard, The Bell and the Blackbird gives lucky readers the full malt taste of life. Whether Whyte’s audience is a board room full of business leaders, politicians living in the pressure-cooker of public scrutiny or just “regular folks,” living paycheck to paycheck, poetry contains a “pause button” that, when pressed, allows one to be still and think.
The collection is divided into nine sections, each adding a nuanced layer to Whyte’s universal theme of mindfulness. The mindfulness to which I refer is invoked head-on in the collection’s introductory poem, Lough Inagh, an incomparably beautiful place along Ireland’s Connemara seacoast. Connemara contrasts rugged coastline with quiet pastures serving as a perfect setting for life’s similar contrasts. The poet states that he is doing nothing less than escorting his reader beyond the “shadow, not of death, but of the unconquerable kingdom of life.”
O love.
There is a door
beneath everything
you’ll walk right by
if you don’t stop to look
with that troubled heart
and a loving eye.
This chorus, interspersed six times at intervals throughout the poem, sets a tone. From the “get-go” I felt welcomed by a friend without judgment or condescension. He whispers, Walk with me, Just Beyond Yourself (Part II), offers Blessings & Prayers (Part III), shepherds me through Winter Griefs (Part IV), invites me to listen to the Muse (Part V), gives me the “Gift of Time” in Seeing You (Part VI), shows the light that has come to find me on the far side of the world in Travels (Part VII), takes me on a scenic hike through the mountains of central Japan in Nakasendo (Part VIII). The journey winds down where it began, on the coast of Ireland (Part IX), where I hear waves breaking and foaming against the rocky shore.
Wallace Stevens, in a note to his daughter Holly written in 1950, describes poetry as “a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right.” I have no idea if Whyte is aware of Stevens’ succinct description of poetry’s life-shaping function or not. But as I read through The Bell and the Blackbird, the premise resonates. In poem after poem the chef lays before the reader a buffet fit, not for a culinary glutton, but for the person who seeks real nourishment to empower is life-journey.
In the title poem, we’re challenged to hear the blackbird’s call to courage—courage to live fully the life to which we’ve have been called—a life so full of love and radiance that one shouts Allelujah now, and at the end. “A Mind Shaped by Moorland,” addresses the universal theme of fear. Whyte’s skillful use of poetic devices such as repetition, I am not afraid, some six times, offers a fresh perspective to those of us who fear the stranger on the cliff edge path.
I’m struck by the simplicity of Whyte’s work . . .
Blessings for the Light
I thank you, light, again,
for helping me to find
the outline of my daughter’s face.
Similarly, in
Blessing for Sound
I thank you,
for the smallest sound,
for the way my ears open
even before my eyes.
These excerpts signal the consummate skill of David Whyte: he meets his reader in the mix and muddle of everyday life, as in
A Gift of Time
The timeless beauty of your face, looking by stealth
can see again the beckoning face of time itself,
can witness both time and the timeless in one gold face,
never counting our hours together as one heart,
but counting every single one we spend apart.
Well aware that life is a journey, poems such as “Prayer for John Monahan” and “Blessing for One Who has Taken Their Own Life,” examine the nature of life’s ultimate journey. This journey travels down paths of relationships, somewhat hidden, speckled by regret that the one loved was misunderstood. Even this finds redemption in Whyte’s treatment of life’s hardest experiences.
You will want to plan periods of quiet time in your day. You will want to keep a copy of “The Bell and the Blackbird,” in your office desk drawer, retrieve it over a light lunch and after consuming your fill of physical food, open its pages to
"The single, full malt taste of something met,
a breathing through in the chest, a way of coming to
and of tasting again, the essence of wanting to live,
something paid for by our seeking and our patience,
just a tang, a hint, a mere breath in the glow light,
of being born again."
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