Mark Nepo: The Way Under the Way
An Interview with Mark Nepo: The Way Under the Way
Mark Nepo is a good friend of OMTimes and has visited with us several times over the years. We are delighted to have him back to share about his new book of poetry, The Way Under the Way: The Place of True Meeting that was just published in November by Sounds True.
Mark Nepo first came to our attention with his #1 New York Times bestseller The Book of Awakening, which has inspired readers and spiritual seekers all over the
world, and became one of Oprah’s Ultimate Favorite Things in 2010. This spiritual daybook calls us to reclaim aliveness, to take each day one at a time, as we savor the beauty offered by life’s unfolding. In this masterpiece, Mark speaks of spirit and friendship, urging readers to stay vital and in love with this life, no matter the hardships. Encompassing many traditions and voices, his words offer insight on pain, wonder, and love. Fans of this book will be happy to hear that there is a 2017 calendar for The Book of Awakening!
He’s been called “one of the finest spiritual guides of our time,” “a consummate storyteller,” and “an eloquent spiritual teacher.” A prolific writer and poet, Mark has published eighteen books and recorded thirteen audio projects, including The One Life We’re Given (Atria, 2016), Inside the Miracle (Sounds True), voted one of the top ten best books of 2015, and several other books that have earned many Best of Year awards such as The Endless Practice (Atria), Reduced to Joy (Viva Editions), and Seven Thousand Ways to Listen (Atria), which won the 2012 Books for a Better Life Award.
Mark was part of Oprah Winfrey’s The Life You Want Tour in 2014 and has appeared several times with Oprah on her Super Soul Sunday program on OWN TV. In 2015 AgeNation gave Mark, a two-time cancer survivor, a Life-Achievement Award. This year he was named one of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People by Watkins: Mind Body Spirit and was also chosen as one of OWN’s SuperSoul 100, a group of inspired leaders using their gifts and voices to elevate humanity.
IN CONVERSATION WITH MARK NEPO ABOUT HIS NEW BOOK OF POETRY, THE WAY UNDER THE WAY: THE PLACE OF TRUE MEETING
OMTIMES: THE WAY UNDER THE WAY encompasses almost twenty years of poetry. Please tell us about the ground this new book covers
MARK NEPO: This edition contains three separate books of poetry, gathering 217 poems retrieved and shaped during my forties, fifties, and now sixties. The first two books, Suite for the Living and Inhabiting Wonder, bear witness to the messy and magnificent journey of being human. First published in 2004, they were wonderfully received and sold out of their first editions. Evolving these books further, I’ve integrated fifty-eight new poems. The third book, The Way Under the Way, gathers eighty-two of my most recent poems. The newer poems center on the place of true meeting that is always near, where we chance to discover our shared humanity and common thread of Spirit.
OMTIMES: What does the title THE WAY UNDER THE WAY mean?
MARK NEPO: Over the years, I’ve learned that moments of deep living let us hear a deeper music, if all too briefly. Yet it’s this timeless terrain that brings us alive. We can call this foundational geography, the way under the way. Often, these moments are brought about by unexpected doses of love, suffering, beauty or truth. And behind every blessing we can’t explain, an unseen element brings us together when we’re too exhausted to resist. Everything visible rises out of a greater, invisible force that brings it into being. Under every act of courage or love, there’s a momentum of braveries and care that has gathered and passed through everyone who ever lived. This book explores that place of true meeting, which is always near. It’s natural that we all try to distinguish ourselves in the first half of life, trying to find our unique gift and contribution, trying to discover how special, different, and extraordinary we are. But eventually, we’re transformed by experience to seek what we have in common with all life, so we might discover our one true kinship. This shift from trying to be special to seeking what is special in everything marks the way under the way.
OMTIMES: You speak about retrieving poems rather than authoring them? What do you mean by this?
MARK NEPO: The poems are the teachers. They arrive with their wisdom and become my guides. What they surface becomes my inner curriculum and by staying in conversation with them, I grow. We’re all drawn to what we need to learn, which if engaged with honesty reveals insights common to us all. When young, I worked earnestly with the hope of creating a great poem or two. Then, during my cancer journey, I needed to discover true poems that would help me live. Now, blessed to still be here, I want to be the poem!
OMTIMES: In your opinion, what is the purpose of poetry?
MARK NEPO: Poetry is the unexpected utterance of the soul that comes at times to renew us when we least expect it. Poems show us how we belong to each other and life. Like all forms of art, poetry marries what is with what can be. Poems show us our possibility. There is a mystical assumption of Unity underneath all poems. Every honest, heartfelt expression shows how being connected to life in all its forms allows each of us to be more fully ourselves.
OMTIMES: You often talk about poetry and art as an inner process that is available to all. Can you speak to this?
MARK NEPO: My understanding of art and expression has evolved through the years. I have always been in awe of the relational power of creation. That is, what happens between the thing created and the creator. And just as the most transformative moments of love lead us into a sweet place where what is loved and the lover merge, become one, and are no longer distinguishable—so too with the created piece and the thing compelling the artist to create it. In this regard, Schweitzer might be considered a more powerful artist than Picasso, for he appears to have been more deeply transformed by his journey to create a hospital in Africa than Picasso, who seemed to function as a brilliant, though rarely affected, catalyst in his prodigious output of painting after painting.
Clearly this sort of creativity is available to everyone, whether we have talent or not, for ability or prowess is not the point. This notion of art is focused more on the impact of the process than on the result. The capacity of art that lives in everyone is a seed of transformation we each carry; a way of knowing and making that can lead us to what is true over what is great; a way of searching that can lead us to what is worth celebrating over any short-lived illusion of celebrity.
By trying to create, we are created. By trying to express, we are expressed. By trying to discover meaning, we become meaningful. So the measure of great art can be understood, not so much by the singular beauty achieved in birthing a piece of art, but more by the power of transformation it births in us for the journey of creating it. It is not the thing created, but the creative act that restores us to our place in the mystery.
We are all artists, waiting to create and waiting to be created—each of us shaped by our devotions and trials in fitting things together. Everyone is privileged to take the artist’s journey, if we only dare to voice what we feel.
OMTIMES: Can you share a poem from the book that has meaning for you?
MARK NEPO: “Freefall” is the final poem in a sequence comprised of six smaller poems. Each was written at the crest of a troubled time, just before I broke surface in yet another way. The six poems appeared over a period of eighteen years. Each felt complete unto itself at the time and each served as a guide for the phase of life I was moving through. It was only after living with them for all those years that I realized—they belong together. Like beads for a necklace I didn’t know they would form, I worked to polish each. Only to discover, beyond any conscious knowing or intent, that these expressions were a suite of poems. The insights of our lives are formed this way, appearing one by one. Yet over time, the beads of wisdom we earn reveal their power as we discover that they and we and everything living belong to each other. I often end readings and retreats with this poem. It’s like a spiritual handshake for me.
