Diane Ackerman
Diane Ackerman
Diane Ackermanis an American poet, essayist, and naturalist known for her wide-ranging curiosity and poetic explorations of the natural world...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth7 October 1948
CountryUnited States of America
animal confusion world
I like handling newborn animals. Fallen into life from an unmappable world, they are the ultimate immigrants, full of wonder and confusion.
skins world
Our skin is what stands between us and the world.
cells world body
There is a furnace in our cells, and when we breathe we pass the world through our bodies, brew it lightly, and turn it loose again, gently altered for having known us.
trying fever world
To begin to understand the gorgeous fever that is consciousness, we must try to understand the senses and what they can tell us about the ravishing world we have the privilege to inhabit.
magic world attention
We can't enchant the world, which makes its own magic; but we can enchant ourselves by paying deep attention
heart civilization world
When I go biking, I am mentally far far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart.
world shapes chaos
Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world.
Apes do it. Scorpions do it. Fireflies do it,
senses understand
There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses.
embrace legs pushing six time
We embrace two-legged beings, and can warm to four-legged beings, too, but for most people, six legs is pushing it. Most don't need multi-eyed, antennaed face time.
generally peace regard
The garden is a living, pulsing, singing, scratching, warring, erotic, and generally rowdy thing. I may find peace in its midst, but I regard it as a whole with many parts, a plural organism.
areas drop facing seek shelter wild
Like many animals, wild ponies can sense a drop in barometric pressure. When a storm threatens, they know to seek shelter in hilly areas and huddle together with their rumps facing the oncoming wind.
divide evolved exist provide relation scouts volumes
When all is said and done, we exist only in relation to the world, and our senses evolved as scouts who bridge that divide and provide volumes of information, warnings and rewards.
cells choices define few further future gizmos haunt impulses knowing traces ultimately
I like knowing that the further back one traces any lineage, the narrower the path grows, to the haunt of just a few shaggy ancestors, with luck on their side, little gizmos in their cells and a future storied with impulses and choices that will ultimately define them.