Mark Nepo – Reduced to Joy
Omtimes: Is there anything else about Reduced to Joy you’d like to share with OmTimes readers?
MN: These poems have been retrieved and shaped over the last thirteen years. They have been my teachers about the nature of working with what we’re given till it wears us through to joy. My hope is that the poems in this book will serve as a threshold to an underlying connection to the greater life we are all a part of. I hope the book will be a resource for you when faced with the difficulties of living. I hope the poems will confirm that, no matter the struggle you find yourself in, you are not alone. May these poems be honest companions on the journey to joy.
Seven Thousand Ways to Listen is another book from Mark that came out in 2012. Experiencing hearing loss himself, Mark affirms that listening is one of the most mysterious, luminous, and challenging art forms on Earth: “Whatever difficulty you face, there are time-tried ways you can listen your way through, because listening is the doorway to everything that matters. It enlivens the heart the way breathing enlivens the lungs. We listen to awaken our heart. We do this to stay vital and alive.”
Omtimes: What was the experience of losing your hearing and, through this, what did you come to realize about the importance of listening?
MN: I have significant hearing loss, but I’m not deaf. This happened slowly over many years. I found out only recently that my hearing loss is due to how the chemo I had over twenty years ago damaged the cilia in my ears. This has taught me many things. One thing I learned, paradoxically, is that there is much to be heard in silence. When we are forced to stop the noise around us and in us, we begin to hear everything that is not us, and this is the beginning of humility and the renewal of our soul’s energy; as only by listening to all that is larger than us can we discover and feel our place in the Universe.
