"The language of poetry takes us outside of our small selves and calls us to look at ourselves and the world with fresh eyes," states David Whyte, the author of four books of poetry and The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of Soul in Corporate America and Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work As A Pilgrimage of Identity. This Yorkshire-born author characterizes the soul as the indefinable essence of a person's spirit and being.

On this six-hour audio adventure, Whyte uses poetry as a probe into the soul's expression through our desires, passions, struggles and changes. He quotes from his own poems and those of Emily Dickinson, William Blake, W .B. Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, and others. We are challenged to see how our destiny is played out at "the fierce edges of our lives." These CDs have many insights on work, marriage, life's sharp edges, the radical experience of grief and loss, making a house of belonging in the world, the ecological perspective of creation, the danger of basing one's life on contingency, paying real attention, and becoming beauty's apprentice.

Whyte's relish for poetry as a treasure and as a guide comes through loud and clear in his presentations. He says at one point, "As human beings we're constantly trying to find solid ground on which to stand, but from that solid ground we also want a relationship with the intangible. If poetry is anything it's that relationship — the conversation between what is solid, grounded, and real in our life and what we long for in the untouchable, the numinous, the eternal." Clear Mind, Wild Heart explores both of these realms with grace and passion and great wisdom.