Essentials

'Great poems,' David Whyte has said, 'are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body.' Essentials is a collection of his own best poems, each in their way about capturing the experience itself, whether that is in the daily shifts, the ever-turning seasons or the bigger cycle of gain and grief that are part of our journey through life. Each poem is accompanied by a short context on where and when it was written. Together they form an elegant testament to David Whyte's most closely-held understanding - that human life cannot be apportioned out as one thing or another; rather, it is best seen as a living conversation, a way between and beyond, made beautiful by darkness as well as light, at its essence both deeply solitary and profoundly communal. This updated edition includes poems from his 2021 collection, Still Possible.

PRAISE FOR DAVID WHYTE:Keep this book by your bedside forever. I know I will, Consolations, it bears repeating, is an absolutely magnificent read - the kind that reorients your world and remains a compass for a lifetime, We think we know what we are talking about, the meaning of things, the basic rules of language, until we read David Whyte's Consolations where we are forced to reassess everything and begin again. Such an essential and beautiful book, A word can know you better than you know yourself and I did not fully understand this until I read Consolations. It is an immensely powerful book. It is an extraordinary book . . . You will want to keep it forever, David Whyte makes the reading of poetry a matter of life and death. His poetry has moved me and changed me

Internationally acclaimed poet David Whyte makes his home in the Pacific Northwest, where rain and changeable skies remind him of the other, more distant homes from which he comes: Yorkshire, Wales and Ireland. He holds a degree in Marine Zoology and honorary degrees from Neumann University in Pennsylvania and Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia. He is the author of nine volumes of poetry and four books of prose, as well as a collection of audio recordings. @whytedw | davidwhyte.com