Poetry for Students

Volume 19 165

Julie Gleason Alford

In the following essay, Alford discusses Ack-

erman’s life and writings.

Diane Ackerman is one of the most highly ac-

claimed lyric poets writing in the United States. Her

poetry displays a mastery of language, lexical pre-

cision, and a vast range of poetic forms and voices.

A passionate, disciplined writer, Ackerman creates

poetry full of wit, compassion, courage, and fact; it

is a poetry of wonder and celebration for the natural

world and the human condition. “Ackerman is not

interested in a poetry of irony or theory or intellec-

tual distance,” notes reviewer Michael McFee. “Her

poems are immediate... and accessible to anyone

who has ever felt anything intensely” (National Pub-

lic Radio, 7 July 1991). The fusion of science and

art is one feature of Ackerman’s poetry that makes

her distinct from her contemporaries. To those who

question the appropriateness or purpose of blending

poetry with science, Ackerman replies: “Not to

write about Nature in its widest sense, because

quasars or corpuscles are not ‘the proper realm of

poetry,’ as a critic once said to me, is not only ir-

responsible and philistine, it bankrupts the experi-

ence of living, it ignores much of life’s fascination

and variety. I’m a great fan of the Universe, which

On Location in the Loire Valley

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