Diane Ackerman

In an eye-opening sequence of personal meditations through the cycle of seasons, one of our most celebrated storyteller-poet-naturalists awakens us to the world at dawn. Diane Ackerman draws from sources as diverse as meteorology, world religion, etymology, art history, and poetry in order to celebrate that moment in which the deepest arcades of life and matter become visible. From spring in Ithaca, New York, to winter in Palm Beach, Florida, Dawn Light is an impassioned call to revel in our numbered days on a turning earth. A Los Angeles Times Favorite Book, Booklist Editors Choice Award, Spirituality and Practice Best of 2009, Library Corner Best of List, and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2009. [More…]

"Diane Ackerman discusses the science of the brain as only she can. In addition to explaining memory, thought, emotion, dreams, and language acquisition, she reports on the latest discoveries in neuroscience and addresses controversial subjects like the effects of trauma and male versus female brains. Ackerman distills the hard, objective truths of science in order to yield vivid, heavily anecdotal explanations about a range of existential questions regarding consciousness, human thought, memory, and the nature of identify."--BOOK JACKET.

In this collection, Diane Ackerman, with astonishing candor, lays bare her desires, anger, jealousy, fears, and anxiety as she probes not only her psychic landscape but also her past. And what gradually rises to the surface is an understanding of how the poet uses verse to purge her demons, express her delight, or confess secret longing, and through this process come to a better understanding of the self. The author of twenty celebrated books of poetry and nonfiction, Diane Ackerman offers a new collection of masterfully crafted poems with an unusual focus. At the heart of Origami Bridges is the delicate relationship of trust between analyst and patient, a relationship that grows out of the emotional give-and-take of the psychoanalytic process. Ackerman's energy and passion are everywhere in evidence, and "she makes the task of putting words to the wordless seem effortless" [Manchester Journal]. Exuberant, lyrical, these are deeply felt poems about life and one of its most important relationships. This collection is Diane Ackerman at the height of her powers as a poet.

Poet and naturalist Diane Ackerman discusses her garden and uses it as a metaphor, exploring beauty and the human condition.

In The Rarest of the Rare, Ackerman sets off on journeys that lead to, among other places, the habitats of the golden lion tamarind in the rain forests of Brazil, the monk seals of the Pacific's French Frigate Shoals, and the endearing short-tailed albatross on an almost inaccessible island off Japan, as well as the vital but threatened layover sites of the vastly traveled monarch butterfly. She weaves together her own poetic observations of such invaluable creatures and landscapes with the informed, entertaining, and sometimes quirky or compulsive voices of the men and women who know them best. The result is a book that broadens our horizons by carrying us across them. It sings to us in the voice of that uncommon bird herself, Diane Ackerman.

Following the triumphant success of her A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman has turned her formidable gifts to that greatest gift of all - the elusive, eternal, and endlessly interesting matter of love. The result is pure Ackerman: a splendid, serious, scientific, poetic, playful, and lyrical "tour d'horizon" of love's many forms and faces. Ackerman draws on a variety of sources, both classical and from her immediate experience. The historical, cultural, religious, and biological roots of love are all explored and illuminated. She gives a fresh new reading to Freud ("mapping the war zones of the heart"), Stendhal (love as fantasy), and Proust ("the erotics of waiting"), and draws lessons from lovers across time. Her attention then moves to the physical - the chemistry, biology, and neurophysiology associated with love in the brain, mind, and body. She discusses the "evolution of the face," the cuddle, both as caress and as chemical, and the customs of marriage. There are astonishments everywhere. Her distinctive touch, aided by her personal adventures and explorations, enriches our understanding of women and horses, men and mermaids, sex and flying, and other equally enticing subjects. The book begins: "Love is the great intangible." Diane Ackerman then proceeds to make it more tangible, traceable, breathable, and ... well, lovable.

This collection of verse touches on such topics as a hospital vigil, the Amazon rain forest, and the icy Antarctic, and offers a selection from the author's dramatic poem about a Mexican nun and the Inquisition.

A Natural History of the Senses is a vibrant celebration of our ability to smell, taste, hear, touch, and see. Poet, pilot, naturalist, journalist, essayist, and explorer, Diane Ackerman weaves together scientific fact with lore, history, and voluptuous description. The resulting work is a startling and enchanting account of how human beings experience and savor the world. A Natural History of the Senses is at once an ingenious exploration of the physical processes underlying our perceptions and an eloquent ode to life -- a rare combination of science and poetry. - Jacket flap.

Though Wallace Stevens' shorter poems are perhaps his best known, his longer poems, Helen Hennessy Vendler suggests in this book, deserve equal fame and equal consideration. Stevens' central theme--the worth of the imagination--remained with him all his life, and Vendler therefore proposes that his development as a poet can best be seen, not in description--which must be repetitive--of the abstract bases of his work, but rather in a view of his changing styles. The author presents here a chronological account of fourteen longer poems that span a thirty-year period, showing, through Stevens' experiments in genre, diction, syntax, voice, imagery, and meter, the inventive variety of Stevens' work in long forms, and providing at the same time a coherent reading of these difficult poems.

Contains: The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet / William Shakespeare -- from Twisted tales from Shakespeare / Richard Armour -- Love / Takasaki Masakaze -- Invitation to love / Paul Laurence Dunbar -- The wooing of Ariadne / Harry Mark Petrakis -- from A Natural history of love / Diane Ackerman -- Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo / John Zaritsky.

"Whatever the catchphrase of the moment - being in the grove or the zone, feeling the flow, jamming - we all intuitively know and hunger for a state of optimal creative capacity.". "In Deep Play, Diane Ackerman argues eloquently that a wide range of experiences are in fact only aspects of one single kind, the state of transcendence she calls deep play. She explores the nature of deep play in an array of activities, from the exotic to the domestic, from the artistic and the athletic to the spiritual. She writes of the qualities of time, space, and spirit that distinguish deep-play endeavors from the rest of our lives.". "Diane Ackerman shows us that understanding deep play, and some of the ways it is attained, is understanding how lives filled with joy, creativity, and self-fulfillment are sustained. She has written a book that will awaken us all to opportunities in our own lives for deeper and more rewarding play."--BOOK JACKET.

The time is 1939 and the place is Poland, homeland of Antonina Zabinski and her husband, Dr. Jan Zabinski. The Warsaw Zoo flourishes under Jan's stewardship and Antonina's care. When their country is invaded by the Nazis, Jan and Antonina are forced to report to the Reich's newly appointed chief zoologist, Lutz Heck. The Zabinskis covertly begin working with the Resistance and put into action plans to save the lives of hundreds from what has become the Warsaw Ghetto.