Did You Know You’re a Poet?

“We are under the delusion that our next practical, courageous steps all come from planning, organizing and strategy”.

That was the first line of a David Whyte poetry course I’m taking for my birthday, which happens to be today.

And what has struck me in this course is how it isn’t just about poetry. That delusion of which he writes seems to be prevalent not just in poetry – but everywhere. And there’s a way we can step out of that delusion and into the real work of what must come before effective planning, organizing or strategy. 

That first step, paraphrasing Whyte, is to lean against an invisible door that is no door at all. Somewhat less poetically, to me that means: lean against the edge of everything that you know on the edge of what you don’t yet. And dwelling there, inquiring there, dipping into the unconscious – and then learning to “speak what lies invisible and unstirred”. Learn how to give form to what’s not yet – a place from which all your other actions will fall.  

The unknown is famously chaotic and scary, isn’t it?

We worry about this, that and the other thing. Science will tell us that we’re built to try to predict the unknown – figure out what might happen next so we can be ready for any threats.

Sure.

But what if we were built for something slightly more nuanced than that? What if we’ve been built not just to predict, but to articulate that unknown and extract something new from it?

To see something beyond what we already know, individually and collectively?

Maybe we’re all, in a sense, poets. 

Just for fun, I was checking around the internet and found an interesting article about how much information is in the universe (think about it as how much humans could know). Estimates range from 6x10^80 bits to nearly double that – let’s just say it’s an almost unfathomable number with lots of zeros. Of that knowledge potential, we collectively know astronomically little – 0.0 – with a lot more zeros – before any other numbers show up. Let’s just agree that we know a tiny, tiny fraction of a fraction of everything that we could possibly know. In such an environment, the unknown is ripe for extracting new ideas, thoughts, perspectives, even things. In a way, it would make sense that we’re biologically engineered to not just predict, but to lean into that door of the unknown to make it known. 

Leaning into that unknown takes time, intention and the answers there aren’t immediately obvious. It’s like feeling your way through a dark room. You know something is there – but you’re not quite sure what… And your first attempts at bringing it forth might be a poem, a song, a painting or a sketch. Mediums that somehow transcend ordinary prose and connect with something beyond us. Art like that might be our first step in articulating the unknown and bringing forth something new from it. Not copying, rehashing or retooling what someone else has already done. But truly slowing down and leaning against that door, that is no door at all, until it gives way to what’s behind it. 

If you want to get in on this poetry course, send me a DM or email and I’ll share the details with you. I’ve been a fan of David Whyte for a long time and even more so through this course. I originally thought this poetry class was going to be about structure and syllables (ironically enough, I thought it was going to be about planning, organizing and strategy).

And it’s turned into so much more than that as I lean against that door to the unknown myself.