A Literary Lioness with a zookeeper's heart

Diane Ackerman

Born Diane Fink, born October 7, 1948 in Waukegan, Illinois , she was raised in Waukegan, Illinois. She received her B.A. in English from Penn State and an M.F.A. and Ph.D in English from Cornell University in 1978. Her dissertation advisor was Carl Sagan. From 1980 to 1983 she taught English at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has been married to novelist, Paul West since 1970. She currently resides in Ithaca, New York. A collection of her manuscripts, writings and papers (the Diane Ackerman Papers, 1971-1997--Collection No. 6299) is housed at the Cornell University Library. Ackerman's book A Natural History of the Senses inspired the five-part Nova miniseries Mystery of the Senses , which she hosted.

Ackerman's awards and honors include: a Guggenheim Fellowship, the John Burroughs Nature Award, and the Lavan Poetry Prize.. She was named a "Literary Lion" by the New York Public Library, and a molecule ("dianeackerone") has been named after her. In 2008 she won the Orion Book Award for The Zookeepers Wife

Poet, essayist, and naturalist, Diane Ackerman is the author of two dozen highly acclaimed works of nonfiction and poetry, including A Natural History of the Senses -- a book beloved by millions of readers all over the world. Humans might luxuriate in the idea of being “in” nature, but Ms. Ackerman has taught generations that we are nature—for “no facet of nature is as unlikely as we, the tiny bipeds with the giant dreams.” In prose so rich and evocative that one can feel the earth turning beneath one’s feet as one reads, Ackerman’s thrilling observations—of things ranging from the cloud glories to the human brain to endangered whooping cranes—urge us to live in the moment, to wake up to nature’s everyday miracles. Her 2007 work of narrative nonfiction, The Zookeepers Wife, received the Orion Book Award, which honored it as "a groundbreaking work of nonfiction, in which the human relationship to nature is explored in an absolutely original way through looking at the Holocaust. A few years ago, 'nature' writers were asking themselves, How can a book be at the same time a work of art, an act of conscientious objection to the destruction of the world, and an affirmation of hope and human decency?

The Zookeeper's Wife answers this question." Speaking deeply to readers of all ages, it has been chosen as a Freshman Reads and Community Reads book in many cities. Ms. Ackerman's other works of nonfiction include: An Alchemy of Mind, a poetics of the brain based on the latest neuroscience; Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden; Deep Play, which considers play, creativity, and our need for transcendence; A Slender Thread, about her work as a crisis line counselor; The Rarest of the Rare and The Moon by Whale Light, in which she explores the plight and fascination of endangered animals; A Natural History of Love; On Extended Wings, her memoir of flying; and A Natural History of the Senses.

Some of her poems

School Prayer

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,
I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.
In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the star

Afterthought
Toadies thick as an Egyptian plague
line your office each afternoon.
Wit-lame and mincing, they backpat or effuse.
People stop in the hallways to discuss your mood—
the deft, the spoonfed, those with brains of rattan.
Stricken, I wince as you rally each
with well-tried, if tonic, deceits.
Sweet years, I rode your faith’s catamaran,
thought I’d a special affection specially won.
When my metal fretted, lest it fly apart,
I coiled you round the mainspring of my heart.
But you were lukewarm to me as to any other,
nesting your indifference in charm.
All the while I flourished in your countenance,
you gulled me, you led me a dance,
wooed me as protçå, lady-love, confrère,
when you never cared, you never cared.

A Chapter from the Garden

Where hot pipes
run under the pool deck
a garter snake
we tag “World Without End”
finds central heating
a boon to his aging hide.

He still likes to stroll
ten yards of bleached wood
to be swell
under the porte-cochere
of a cushion yew, or better yet
ladder up its needles
and coil right on top
in sunswilling rapture.

We find him there
each afternoon, an odalisque
in a striped caftan
resting his head
on one long elbow,
basking and feeding,
high, narrow, and handsome.

Nor does he mind
our infant-like ogling,
though a warm pea
offered to him on a fork tine
made him leap
down into the bowels of the bush
and whip under the pool deck
for quick cover.

Most days, tolerant to a fault,
he puts up with all
our menu mischief, barracuda stares,
poking and sarcasm,
treating us even
to his red forked tongue,
and Hindu rope trick
(where he disappears
down a coil of himself).

At sundown, he staggers
through the grass,
back to the slender missus
we often find at slink
beneath the wild orchids,
dashing and cool,
full of nobody’s business,
a snatch of melody
in summer’s unbroken hum.

Losing the Game
On the face of this midfielder,
a saint’s passion.

Sweat brilliantines his hair
flat as a seal pup’s fur.

Thorns rake one knee, and fatigue
is a train whistle that never quits.

In his mind, the falcon of defeat
slips off its own hood

and sails into the vapory cold December,
hangs like a crucifixion over the field,

then slants down the wide thermal
of his shame. Today 2 + 2 is algebra,

and nothing will transmute
his base metal to gold leaf.

When crowd and players have gone,
he watches the sun set

under a tumultuous bruise of sky,
below the empty grin of the bleachers,

deep into the valley,
a ghastly, yellow bile draining out.