Ackerman, Diane (Swan)
Born: October 7, 1948, in Waukegan, Illinois
Vocations: Poet, Journalist, Essayist, Naturalist, Style Writer, Children’s Book Author, Memoirist, Director, Poetry Judge, Professor, Editor, Lecturer, Prose Stylist
Geographic Connection to Pennsylvania: Allentown, Lehigh County; University Park, Centre County
Keywords: Academy of American Poets Prize; Boston University; Cornell University; Corson-Bishop Poetry Prize; Corson French Prize; Heerman-McCalmons Playwriting Prize; Literary Lion; The Moon by Whale Light; New Yorker; Pennsylvania State University; Rockefeller Foundation; Washington University
Abstract: Ever since her youth, many years of which were spent living in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Diane Ackerman has developed her talent as a poet. Ackerman received her undergraduate education from the Pennsylvania State University and her graduate degrees from Cornell University. Gaining the respect of her contemporaries through her writings, Ackerman has been asked to participate as a poetry judge, lecture at major universities, and has had many of her poems printed in major publications. She has been presented with major awards, including the Academy of American Poets Prize, and has received grants and recognition from prestigious foundations such as the National Endowment for the Arts. She has also earned respect for her scientific writing.
Biography:
Diane Ackerman was born on October 7, 1948, in Waukegan, Illinois. Ackerman was born to Sam Fink, a local shoes salesman, and Marsha Tischler Fink, whom Ackerman describes as a “seasoned world traveler.” Spending most of her youth living in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Ackerman states that she can remember having “poetic tendencies,” even at a young age. She remembers “flushing with wonder at the sight of my first metaphor—the living plums: the bats.” As a child, Ackerman had an outlandish fascination with “boy-like” things. Nature, animals, astronomy, and the universe were subjects that intrigued the young writer and are still the most popular topics that she explores today. Ackerman attended Boston College from 1966-1967 and then transferred to the Pennsylvania State University where she received her B.A. in English in 1970. Determined, Ackerman continued her education at Cornell where, over a seven-year period, she earned a Master in Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in Creative Writing and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Literature. Although Ackerman remains childless, she has been married to Paul West, also a writer, for 29 years. Since early in her career, Ackerman has been considered a plethora of things: poet, author, travel writer, and essayist. Even Ackerman herself is not sure of exactly what to call herself. Whatever the endeavor, Ackerman can be described as “brimming with the infectious enthusiasm generally only found in children,” a description she is happy to accept.
Ackerman has been presented with many prestigious awards and honors throughout her career. While attending graduate school, she was awarded various awards for her work, including the Academy of American Poets Prize, which aims to provide the most important collection of awards for poetry in the United States. Again, in 1985 the Academy of American Poets honored her with the Peter I.B. Lavan Award, an award that recognizes talent among young poets whom have published at least one full-length book of poetry. Ackerman has also been given the honor of participating as a panel judge in many prestigious poetry competitions, including those of the New York Foundation for the Arts (1987) and National Endowment for the Arts (1991), evidence of the respect this gifted writer has gained from her fellow poets. She has also received grants from organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the nation’s largest annual founder of the arts, dedicated to supporting excellence in the world of art, bringing the arts to all citizens of the United States, and providing leadership in arts education.
Although Ackerman has received ample praise for many of her poetic works, A Natural History of the Senses (1990), a work of prose, is perhaps her most important literary contribution to date. Described as an “encyclopedia of the senses,” this book, celebrating the power of human perception, is intermixed with an assortment of history, biology, anthropology, cultural fact, and folklore. This best seller, a surprise to Ackerman, has been published in 16 countries and is in the process of being development into a PBS series entitled “The Senses.” Other books that have received notoriety include Twilight of the Tenderfoot (1980), a work of prose that recounts her adventures living the life of a cowhand at a cattle ranch located in the heart of New Mexico. On Extended Wings (1985), a memoir, illustrates her experiences as a student pilot and has been described by Karen Rile, a book reviewer, as “a poet’s notebook with wings” because of her brilliant use of metaphors to describe her unique experience.
Mixing journalism, science, and poetry, just as she had as a novice writer, Ackerman’s unique vision has left fans and poets wanting more. Ackerman’s first full-length book of poetry, The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral (1976), is a celebration of astronomy and the earth. In this book, exploring comets, the landscape of space, and the solar system, Ackerman travels through the scenic route that is our universe, as she explores the Milky Way and the moon in verse. Ackerman questions the role of humans in this vast galaxy, and wonders in her poem entitled I Reveille:
How shall I celebrate the planet
That, even now, carries me in its fruited womb?
Ackerman achieves, through this demonstration, a sense of how closely compatible terrestrial exploration, poetry, science and art are in reality. Ackerman aims to confer the deserved respect to earth, allowing humans to realize and pay tribute to how small we are in the grand scheme of things.
Ackerman has been admired as an accomplished observer of nature. This quiet and meticulous observance is evident in her work entitled The Moon by Whale Light, and Other Adventures among Bats, Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales, a collection of four essays adapted from articles previously published in the New Yorker. Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times offered such praise, writing that Ackerman “has a gift for sparkling, resonant language, and her descriptions of various animals and their habitats are alive with verbal energy and delight. She describes bats as delicately assembled packages of ‘fur and appetite’ and characterizes their high-pitched cries as ’vocal Braille.’”
Ackerman also uses nature to express the sensual side of love, which she explores in her many romantic poems. Ackerman’s passion for life and the affirmation of love’s power resound throughout her poetry. This passion can be seen in her 1994 collection of essays entitled A Natural History of Love. Washington Post Book World contributor Barbara Raskin characterized this volume as “an audaciously brilliant romp…Using an evolutionary history as her launchpad, Ackerman takes off on a space flight in which she describes, defines, theorizes, analyzes, analogizes, apologizes, generalizes, explains, philosophizes, embellishes, codifies, classifies, confesses, compares, contrasts, speculates, hypothesizes and generally carries on like a hooligan about amatory love. It’s a blast.”
In her poem The Planets, Ackerman acknowledges the existence of heaven, but alludes that love, in fact, is indeed the greater power when she states:
No heaven could please me as my love
does....
When, deep in the cathedral of y ribs,
love rings like a chant, I need no heaven.
This, perhaps, portrays the best image of the uncontrolled passion for life and love, allowing the reader to appreciate the magnitude of love and the amount of conveniences hat one would give up just to have a taste of it.
Ackerman has grown with her poems and is as diverse as her subject material. Through her vision, she has joined together the awkward pairings of science and poetry, while depicting, in her endearing manner, the passion and joyful exuberance for life, making Ackerman a unique and highly sought after poet of the twenty-first century. Now, at age 50, Ackerman is working on another book of prose as well as a new collection of poems and has even branched out into writing children’s books. Along with working on her new books and poetry, Ackerman is currently a staff writer for the New Yorker and lives in Ithaca, New York with her husband.
Works:
Poetry
Non-fiction
Sources:
This biography was prepared by Jillian Meehan, Fall 2005.