Essay 2

Diane Ackerman's" A Fine, a Private Place

The words carpe diem mean "seize the day" in Latin. It is a theme that has been used throughout the history of literature and has been a popular philosophy in teaching from the times of Socrates and Plato up to the modern English classroom. Carpe diem says to us that life isn't something we have forever, and every passing moment is another opportunity to make the most out of the few precious years that we have left. In the poems "A Fine, a Private Place" by Diane Ackerman and "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell, carpe diem is the underlying theme that ties them together, yet there are still a few key differences throughout each of these two poems that shows two very different perspectives on how one goes about seizing their day. (Jennings, Rebecca 2007)

The first poem by Ackerman is about two lovers who find their own special place to make love: under water. The writer describes the captured moment over four stanzas of the undersea world, describing physical attributes and actions with marine life. Wife of Light displays Ackerman's tremendous range of interests and moods, and also her range of voices. Some of the voices are historical, as in the witty verse "Anne Donne to Her Husband" and the sonnet "Quixote" ("life's torpor is the blazing savanna of my loins"). Ackerman manages to turn even mathematics into poetry in "Song of p." (Jennings, Rebecca 2007)

She assumes the persona of p (pi), the mathematical symbol that represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. The ratio can be carried to an infinite number of decimal places — it never rounds off — and Ackerman focuses on this unusual feature: "I barrel out past horizon's bluff, every digit pacing ...