Essentials by David Whyte: book review

David Whyte: Essentials (2019) is a collection of poetry constructed around friendships over many years – of people, the world, and ‘our astonishing planet.’ In his youth, Anglo-Irish poet David Whyte (1955-) was a naturalist, living in the Galapagos Islands and travelling in the Andes, the Amazon, and the Himalayas.

The collection begins with ‘Start Close In’ inspired by Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321).

David Whyte writes of his homeland, and travels, and his move to America. He writes of religious and artistic traditions, and deep personal emotions, such as love and grief.

The poems are not new (except for one) as they span many years of his previous works. In this edition, after each poem, he writes a few paragraphs on his reflections – where he was when he wrote the poem, why, what inspired him, and so on. Also included in this collection are six short essays: Fintan, Close, Hiding, Despair, Friendship, and Heartbreak.

I like the poem ‘The Bell and the Blackbird’ – about their sounds as calling notes, invitations to go deeper into ‘this life’ or ‘to one that waits’ – ‘either way takes courage.’

The poems and essays were all chosen by the poet’s wife, Gayle Karen Young Whyte – ‘because they have guided me through many difficult years.’ Some lines of her husband’s works became mantras ‘for more boldly inhabiting a desired way of being in the world.’

This is a nice collection, a mixture of light and dark, of places distant and places close to home, and of phases in a transitional life.

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MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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