"Deep play is the ecstatic form of play. In its thrall, all the play elements are visible, but they're taken to intense and transcendent heights." ~ pg. 12

Diane Ackerman's books have a very personal style to them and her poetic prose is a pleasure to read. Her powers of description are some of the best I've ever observed and she takes you into her world with a sense of abandon.

Is there anything Diane Ackerman hasn't done? In each book she reveals more of her fascinating life. I was especially interested in the section on space travel. In this book expect to hear more about her adventures with horses and dolphins. She also intertwines her personal stories with mythology and interesting facts.

As she plays with words she reveals a dark and light side of Deep Play with plenty of personal stories to guide the reader into a greater sense of knowing. What surprised me most in this book was the fact that Diane Ackerman doesn't believe in a God. Of all people I expected her to have a belief in a creator as she is so entranced by nature and writes with such a sense of wonder about the universe.

I could really relate to this one sentence:

"Studies have shown that if one is paid for doing what one loves, it loses some of its appeal." ~ pg. 84

~The Rebecca Review

In this fascinating nonfiction essay, Ackerman explores the benefits of what she defines as "Deep Play", activities which are so absorbing and enriching that the player transcends her setting. These activities, which tend to be recreational in nature, create a state of blissful, unselfconciousness creative capacity. With her lyrical skills, Ackerman examines what is deep play, how it can be attained and how it enriches a person's life. Whether she is exploring the voluptuousness of a windswept Antarctic vista or bicycling down a heat shimmered country road, Ackerman manages to evoke the sacredness of deep play which is central to the creativity of musicians, physicists and artists, providing the fertile mental landscape so vital to cosmic insight and social development. Central to this state of bliss is a communing with nature that lies at the heart of so many activities: rock climbing, biking, hiking, scuba diving, flying all provide a connection to the outdoors and its inhabitants. The author's own life is a testament to the ways in which deep play can inspire and enhance living. Through deep play, Ackerman taps into the imagination that fuels her poetry, her writing, her art, building the foundation for every activity that makes her unique. The book is a beautifully written, enjoyable exhortation to not only stop and smell the roses, but to revel in them and see them in a new light that exults in the glories of nature. A wonderful book!

In this fascinating nonfiction essay, Ackerman explores the benefits of what she defines as "Deep Play", activities which are so absorbing and enriching that the player transcends her setting. These activities, which tend to be recreational in nature, create a state of blissful, unselfconciousness creative capacity. With her lyrical skills, Ackerman examines what is deep play, how it can be attained and how it enriches a person's life. Whether she is exploring the voluptuousness of a windswept Antarctic vista or bicycling down a heat shimmered country road, Ackerman manages to evoke the sacredness of deep play which is central to the creativity of musicians, physicists and artists, providing the fertile mental landscape so vital to cosmic insight and social development. Central to this state of bliss is a communing with nature that lies at the heart of so many activities: rock climbing, biking, hiking, scuba diving, flying all provide a connection to the outdoors and its inhabitants. The author's own life is a testament to the ways in which deep play can inspire and enhance living. Through deep play, Ackerman taps into the imagination that fuels her poetry, her writing, her art, building the foundation for every activity that makes her unique. The book is a beautifully written, enjoyable exhortation to not only stop and smell the roses, but to revel in them and see them in a new light that exults in the glories of nature. A wonderful book!

Deep play, sounds fun doesn't it? Ackerman's most recent book Deep Play is at times enjoyable, in some ways compelling but if it had not been for her beautiful writing and the way she sprinkles surprising human insights throughout the book I could not recommend this book to others. Readers beware, while Diane Ackerman's writing is wonderful - in this publication and others I have read - this particular book tends to be a bit self indulgent at times. I went into the read with a willing mind prepared to further understand deep play. There were moments where I was pleasantly surprised, but mostly disappointed, as Ackerman delivers some great facts but seems all together too scattered in trying to tie them together.

Ackerman sells the need for a book on deep play right from the start telling the reader how our culture "thrives on play," how play is used by animals to survive, and "play is fundamental to evolution." She dives into the constructs of play talking about its rules, social norms, and making sweeping arguments about play as the center of what we call work, "let's make-believe we can shoot a rocket to the moon." Akerman's take on play is based on transcendent.

What I enjoy about Akerman is how she eloquently mixes truly interesting human insights, facts and observations giving the reader brain food to ponder. In one chapter she writes about her experience studying and swimming with dolphins. I could see myself swimming and playing in the water through her eyes. Her description of poetry, "it's a kind of catapult into another metaphysical county where one has longer conceptual arms" is magical. In still another section she dives into youth and the childhood artist almost begging the reader to try and find that inner child thus locating play. Perhaps most magical of all was her writing on horses both historically and their meaning to humans. In the way she describes horses and their link to human history, I would be not surprised if each and every reader feels the desire to go out and watch them or ride them.

Throughout reading this book, I caught myself wondering if I agreed with Ackerman on her definition of Deep Play or if even she agreed with it. Ackerman tends to put Deep Play in a category of the daring and risky. And while her examples hold up especially to adrenalin junkies she herself seems to deviate from this course in some of her examples of play.

Overall Akerman gives the reader a look into her life, smart insights on play and if you like Ackerman's writing and style she will not disappoint you in Deep Play. However, be ready for a slightly scattered and a tad self indulgent ride. Ackerman fails to deliver on the truly profound, instead tells a mini-autobiography of her various life adventures. If the adventures were staged correctly they could be a wonderful addition in and of themselves but in the setting of Deep Play I was more annoyed than mesmerized.

Deep play, sounds fun doesn't it? Ackerman's most recent book Deep Play is at times enjoyable, in some ways compelling but if it had not been for her beautiful writing and the way she sprinkles surprising human insights throughout the book I could not recommend this book to others. Readers beware, while Diane Ackerman's writing is wonderful - in this publication and others I have read - this particular book tends to be a bit self indulgent at times. I went into the read with a willing mind prepared to further understand deep play. There were moments where I was pleasantly surprised, but mostly disappointed, as Ackerman delivers some great facts but seems all together too scattered in trying to tie them together.

Ackerman sells the need for a book on deep play right from the start telling the reader how our culture "thrives on play," how play is used by animals to survive, and "play is fundamental to evolution." She dives into the constructs of play talking about its rules, social norms, and making sweeping arguments about play as the center of what we call work, "let's make-believe we can shoot a rocket to the moon." Akerman's take on play is based on transcendent.

What I enjoy about Akerman is how she eloquently mixes truly interesting human insights, facts and observations giving the reader brain food to ponder. In one chapter she writes about her experience studying and swimming with dolphins. I could see myself swimming and playing in the water through her eyes. Her description of poetry, "it's a kind of catapult into another metaphysical county where one has longer conceptual arms" is magical. In still another section she dives into youth and the childhood artist almost begging the reader to try and find that inner child thus locating play. Perhaps most magical of all was her writing on horses both historically and their meaning to humans. In the way she describes horses and their link to human history, I would be not surprised if each and every reader feels the desire to go out and watch them or ride them.

Throughout reading this book, I caught myself wondering if I agreed with Ackerman on her definition of Deep Play or if even she agreed with it. Ackerman tends to put Deep Play in a category of the daring and risky. And while her examples hold up especially to adrenalin junkies she herself seems to deviate from this course in some of her examples of play.

Overall Akerman gives the reader a look into her life, smart insights on play and if you like Ackerman's writing and style she will not disappoint you in Deep Play. However, be ready for a slightly scattered and a tad self indulgent ride. Ackerman fails to deliver on the truly profound, instead tells a mini-autobiography of her various life adventures. If the adventures were staged correctly they could be a wonderful addition in and of themselves but in the setting of Deep Play I was more annoyed than mesmerized.

I was introduced to her several years ago by a friend who thought I might enjoy her style. A Natural History of Love turned out to be love at first sight. She was open and comfortable with herself, sophisticated (in the good sense) and knowledgeable about nearly everything. The things that got me, however, were her passion and a way with words that enchanted me. Her metaphors were lavish and delightful. She saw the world in rich detail; she felt the world with a sensuousness that raised the hair on my arms. Who could not fall in love with all that?

Our affair-intermittent though it had to be, with each of us off on our own adventures and grown-up obligations-grew more intense with each contact. I naturally had to read A Natural History of the Senses, her first best-seller, and then obsessively dug out whatever I could find that was hers, like The Moon by Whale Light. (I have to admit that I wasn't as spellbound reading that one, for some reason. Still, her perfume wafted from its pages, tugging at my insides.) I went for months without thinking about her. Then a couple of weeks ago I sought out my Diane Ackerman fix on the Internet, and ordered two more of her books (used) from Amazon.com. One was An Alchemy of Mind, and I immersed myself in the luxuriant featherbed of intellect, warmth and sense-stimulation that I had come to expect from her. I've read a number of authors about what we know of the mind, Steven Pinker (clear and antiseptic), Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (gut-aware but sometimes academic), Susan Blackmore (good description but betraying perhaps a meager first-hand knowledge). I'm not certain that I don't give Diane Ackerman the benefit of an occasional doubt-not to say skepticism-about some of her assertions. But, never mind. She's worth it.

The most recent of her books that I have read (not the most recently published) is Deep Play. The blurb on the back of this paperback says, "Ackerman illuminates an exalted state of transcendence achieved through emotionally and physically vigorous activities." I could believe that. Indeed, most of what she writes affects me that way, illuminating, stimulating an almost giddy sense of wonder, a sharing of her own passion almost to a point of transcendence.

The blurb goes on, "The ability to play is an essential part of what it means to be human. And `deep play' is that more intensified form of play that puts us in a rapturous mood and awakens the most creative, sentient, and joyful aspects of our inner selves." Full of anticipation, I dove into the book.

Now, I'm the first to admit (well, maybe not the first) that play is difficult for me. I don't do sports. I hate word games. I know that crossword puzzles would be good for my vocabulary, but I find them frustrating. Playing cards, even with friends, bores me. But Csikszentmihalyi convinced me that what turns me on is related, somehow, to what the athlete feels when he is "in flow," and to why a researcher is willing to give up a big part of her life in pursuit of a hunch, and to the obsession driving a novelist or a sculptor to express something more than a superficial likeness. Csikszentmihalyi, first in his own best-seller Flow and then in his subsequent The Evolving Self and Creativity, clearly describes the urges and satisfactions that make life meaningful for those who push themselves to create and to achieve in response to their inner visions.

So I was disappointed, a little, as I began reading Deep Play. Not that it wasn't my Diane Ackerman. Her pages were full of the delightful metaphors and sensuous descriptions that have been her hallmarks. She proposes that "deep play" is something that comes out of deep inside us, something profound, something distinctly human. It's expressed in many forms, from religion to art to climbing Mount Everest. But I kept feeling as though she were distracted as she wrote. I missed her point a lot as she jumped from example to example. Every so often she seemed to come back and insert a few paragraphs about deep play to keep the thread going. Even her chapters, I thought, lacked coherence. It was like having a serious conversation with someone while we watch television. The enchantment I had come to expect felt, well, thin.

So, the honeymoon is over, perhaps? Had I begun to notice the little crows feet instead of the lips? The mascara instead of the bottomless pools of the eyes? Okay, relax and go with it. Enjoy what's there and don't focus on expectations. If you want information, go to the library. Soak in the warm, sensuous bath. Breath in the perfume you know so well. Anyone can get scattered now and then. Enjoy the snacks and don't anticipate dinner.

Halfway through the book, I found myself paying attention again. She is discussing poetry and how it allows us to perceive the world in more depth because it makes us stop and look around, behind and under the words, puzzle through meanings in our own minds as a poem feeds us sparkles and hints of flavor. The poet and the reader both end up sensing more than what's there on the page. The poet is conscious of the limitations of words in expressing her insides, and resorts to touching the reader on the shoulder to make him look around, or catching his eye to flirt, to suggest, to hint about the inexpressible. Poetry is deep play.

That Diane Ackerman is a poet goes without saying. I've not read any of her dozen or so books of poetry. I've always been one of those people who see a poem as a puzzle, and I've already said how I feel about games. In this chapter, she stops me. I wonder what I've been missing. Poetry, she says, isn't a puzzle, but an invitation. I wonder, "Can I do it?" Is my crotchety mind so ossified that I've lost the ability to play?

I have to smile, in spite of myself. There's that perfume again, turning my head. She may not have her makeup on. Her clothing may be just a little rumpled. Her editor may have had a bad week. Maybe the publisher was pushing to get the thing out, and her flight to Kilimanjaro was only days away. She's only human, after all. Isn't that what I love about her?

Deep play (aka "Flow") is a valuable concept, but don't expect to find any intelligent exposition of it here. Instead, prepare for confusion as seemingly disparate phenomena -- rituals, hallucinations brought on by starvation, and Sunday morning reveries in the park -- are evinced as examples of "deep play". Just how and why these should be lumped together with creative flow is never adequately explained.

All in all, this is a rambling, entirely unsystematic and underresearched book, notwithstanding the author's credentials as a naturalist.* Worse still, as Wolfgang Pauli would say, it is "not even wrong". It has nothing to say, for page after page after page.

Well, not nothing exactly. As an indulgent exercise in vanity, it's worth a titter or two. The author, whose photo reveals a woman of a certain age in King Charles-style tresses, loses no opportunity to remind you the reader that she knows how to live. "I hate the fearful trimming of possibilities that age brings. If you lead a relatively narrow life, I suppose you never notice. But I've always been athletic"... etc etc. Mostly she goes on in this vein, larding up her exploits with new age musings that even I --liberal, female and eco-minded-- found eminently gagworthy. Reader be warned, though: a dark episode intrudes on page 100, as Ackerman takes NASA to task for having had the temerity to reject her for the Journalist in Space program. Her explanation: NASA feared she might say something "wise and profound."[!]

Whatever the case, don't hold your breath waiting for her to say it in this book.

*Serious readers of psychology would do better to consult Czikszentmihalyi's outstanding research on "Flow", while those interested in play in the natural world will adore Bernd Heinrich's Mind of the Raven.

Deep play (aka "Flow") is a valuable concept, but don't expect to find any intelligent exposition of it here. Instead, prepare for confusion as seemingly disparate phenomena -- rituals, hallucinations brought on by starvation, and Sunday morning reveries in the park -- are evinced as examples of "deep play". Just how and why these should be lumped together with creative flow is never adequately explained.

All in all, this is a rambling, entirely unsystematic and underresearched book, notwithstanding the author's credentials as a naturalist.* Worse still, as Wolfgang Pauli would say, it is "not even wrong". It has nothing to say, for page after page after page.

Well, not nothing exactly. As an indulgent exercise in vanity, it's worth a titter or two. The author, whose photo reveals a woman of a certain age in King Charles-style tresses, loses no opportunity to remind you the reader that she knows how to live. "I hate the fearful trimming of possibilities that age brings. If you lead a relatively narrow life, I suppose you never notice. But I've always been athletic"... etc etc. Mostly she goes on in this vein, larding up her exploits with new age musings that even I --liberal, female and eco-minded-- found eminently gagworthy. Reader be warned, though: a dark episode intrudes on page 100, as Ackerman takes NASA to task for having had the temerity to reject her for the Journalist in Space program. Her explanation: NASA feared she might say something "wise and profound."[!]

Whatever the case, don't hold your breath waiting for her to say it in this book.

*Serious readers of psychology would do better to consult Czikszentmihalyi's outstanding research on "Flow", while those interested in play in the natural world will adore Bernd Heinrich's Mind of the Raven.

Diane Ackerman writes with such beauty and her examples are so rich and invigorating. I refer people to her books all the time to experience word artistry in non fiction writers.

In fact, the word "Play" was getting on my nerves with regularity until I read this book which really outlines the Sacred aspect of play.

After reading, I look at everything involving Play from a different plane. My two year old delights in Mommy's delight! How is THAT for trading spaces!

I can't understand the low rating this book has had so far. Some people who reviewed it must be cranky.

Buy it, revel in it, play with the content.

I've enjoyed Ackerman's other books, but this one failed to engage me. It did seem like she stitched a bunch of diary pages together and sent it to her publisher. She's a beautiful poet, but this time her thoughts seemed scattered with only the most lackaidasical attempt on her part to synthesize them.

Usually, I enjoy her style, but I was especially distracted this time trying to keep the relationship between her personal anecdotes and the deep play theory straight.

I have to admit, though, the paperback version has one of the most gorgeous covers I've ever seen. It's sad when more effort appears to have gone into a book's design than its content, though.

Diane Ackerman brings forth yet another stunning lyrical prose that is sure to delight. This book is in itself a 'Deep Play' for not only the author but the reader as well, a book that is meant for enjoyment and relaxation. Ackerman is indeed a stylist in her own right.

I don't want to sound like a curmedgeon, but this book is, to put it mildly, way too self-indulgent. I too like to bike and think, "Wow, the world is a great place," but I truly didn't think anyone else would care. This is a self-indulgent recap of "neat things Diane Ackerman has done in her life" loosely tied together by this deep play idea she gets from Huizinga without ever citing the original source material. It's not that I didn't enjoy reading it -- I did. It reminds me of reading a diary or a travel-log of a friend's adventures. But, compared to her other works, this is fluff with too much of a focus on the author. If the author hadn't been well-known, this never would have been published.

I'm discovering that it really doesn't matter what Ackerman writes about, her ideas and writing style both are so rich. This one, about transcendance, religion, creativity, and other related topics, really spoke to me. I've already reread this book and passed it along to a friend. Beautiful book!