Diane Ackerman – Reading to the Core

Unlike many of the authors profiled in Writing Wild, Diane Ackerman is very familiar to me. I have loved her writing since I first found A Natural History of the Senses in a bookstore thirty years ago. Kathryn Aalto calls Ackerman “nature writing’s Aphrodite: a historian and poet whose eloquent and iridescent words render complex subjects understandable and approachable.” (p. 133) Exactly.

Today’s poem is another Golden Shovel. Ackerman’s work is so quotable, it seemed like a natural fit. Ackerman’s first book was The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral. As some of you know, the mysteries of space are a passion of mine, so deciding on a cosmic theme for today’s poem also seemed natural.

“Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table of the heart.”
Diane Ackerman, reading at The Universe in Verse, 2018

Previous Writing Wild posts:

Day 1: Dorothy Wordsworth
Day 2: Susan Fenimore Cooper
Day 3: Gene Stratton-Porter
Day 4: Mary Austin
Day 5: Vita Sackville-West
Day 6: Nan Shepherd
Day 7: Rachel Carson
Day 8: Mary Oliver
Day 9: Carolyn Merchant
Day 10: Annie Dillard
Day 11: Gretel Ehrlich
Day 12: Leslie Marmon Silko

“Poetry can break open locked chambers of possibility…”
Adrienne Rich

On the eve of a new year, one that already has too many expectations heaped upon it, I look to the stars, where limitless possibilities dwell…

timeless starlight
illuminates winter nights
with ancient stories

I was unsure about the final line of my haiku and undecided about sharing a post today, but after I stumbled upon this treasure from Maria Papova at Brain Pickings, my indecision was gone. I hope you enjoy this poetic celebration of “great scientists and scientific discoveries, and a protest against the silencing of science and the defunding of the arts.”

Here is one of my favorites from a stellar line up of poets.

WE ARE LISTENING
by Diane Ackerman

As our metal eyes wake
to absolute night,
where whispers fly
from the beginning of time,
we cup our ears to the heavens.
We are listening

on the volcanic lips of Flagstaff
and in the fields beyond Boston
in a great array that blooms
like coral from the desert floor,
on highwire webs patrolled
by computer spiders in Puerto Rico.

We are listening for a sound
beyond us, beyond sound,

searching for a lighthouse
in the breakwaters of our uncertainty,
an electronic murmur
a bright, fragile I am.

Read the rest of the poem here.

Here’s to a New Year full of possibility. Please be sure to visit Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe for the Poetry Friday Roundup.

Reading to the Core

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Tag: Diane Ackerman

National Poetry Months: Writing Wild, Day 13

Poetry Friday: “The Universe in Verse”