Following her acclaimed memoir, Being a Rockefeller, Becoming Myself, Eileen Rockefeller’s debut selection of poems, Space Between, invites you to join her private relationships with people, nature, and spirit. Her poems move you beneath the surface of everyday experience.
Rockefeller navigates her unconscious mind as if she had one eye open under water, the other above. She brings shifting patterns of light and dark to poems brimming with intimacy and generosity, hurt and healing, lovers and loved ones, and most of all with the ever-present thrum of the natural world.
Eileen Rockefeller is a visionary catalyst in the fields of mind/body health, social and emotional learning, and innovative philanthropy for clean energy. As founder of the Institute for the Advancement of Health in 1981, she pioneered broad acceptance of mind/body interactions in health and disease. She foresaw the related need for social and emotional learning (SEL) as an integral part of education, prompting Daniel Goleman’s bestseller, Emotional Intelligence, and the co-founding of CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning) in 1994. Eileen was a founding chair of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (2000), and served as long-time co-chair of her family’s generational association, and as co-founder and Vice-Chair of the Growald Family Fund since 2007.
Since the 2013 release of her memoir, Being a Rockefeller, Becoming Myself, (Blue Rider Press, Penguin Group), Eileen has spoken internationally on topics relating to legacy, family, and philanthropy.
She is the youngest daughter of David and Peggy Rockefeller, and a great-grand-daughter of John D. Rockefeller. She has two adult sons and lives with her husband on an organic farm in Vermont.
She received her BA from Middlebury College in 1974 and her MA from Lesley College in 1976.
About the Author
Eileen Rockefeller is an author, public speaker, and venture philanthropist.
Her recent memoir, Being a Rockefeller, Becoming Myself, details a journey of finding herself amidst one of America’s most storied families.
Eileen’s newest work, a debut selection of poems titled Space Between, invites you into a more personal place yet still– to join her private relationships with people, nature, and spirit.
Her poetry moves you beneath the surface of everyday experience. She brings shifting patterns of light and dark to poems brimming with intimacy and generosity, hurt and healing, lovers and loved ones, and most of all with the ever-present thrum of the natural world.
Eileen is a visionary catalyst in the fields of mind/body health, social and emotional learning, and innovative philanthropy for clean energy. As founder of the Institute for the Advancement of Health in 1981, she pioneered broad acceptance of mind/body interactions in health and disease. She foresaw the related need for social and emotional learning (SEL) as an integral part of education, prompting Daniel Goleman’s bestseller, Emotional Intelligence, and the co-founding of CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning) in 1994. Eileen was a founding chair of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (2000), and served as long-time co-chair of her family’s generational association, and as co-founder and Vice-Chair of the Growald Family Fund since 2007.
She speaks internationally on topics relating to legacy, family, and philanthropy, leading discussions around the values that have helped keep the Rockefeller family together for seven generations.
Eileen is the youngest daughter of David and Peggy Rockefeller, and a great-grand-daughter of John D. Rockefeller. She has two adult sons and lives with her husband on an organic farm in Vermont.
She received her BA from Middlebury College in 1974 and her MA from Lesley College in 1976.
Praise For…
"In Space Between Eileen Rockefeller offers us a poetic celebration of daily life and a reminder of the opportunity to find the beauty and meaning present in the ordinary. These poems are an invitation to have new eyes and live the life you have been given deeply and joyfully." -Rachel Naomi Remen MD, Author, Kitchen Table Wisdom
These are real poems in the traditional sense, not confected from wordplay or facile nature analogies or shimmering Haiku surfaces, but wrought in a deep and caustic and sometimes painful quest for the complex truths and felicities of her fascinating life and family that she described in her compelling memoir but transforms into transcendent art in her impassioned poetry.”
… “The holocaust and the tree poem redeems and transcends Joyce Kilmer!”—GEORGE GILDER, Investor, Economist, and Author of several books, including Life After Television, Microcosm, The Spirit of Enterprise,Telecosm, and international bestseller Wealth and Poverty
“You have to be gentle to be strong.” With these words and hundreds of others, Eileen Rockefeller draws us into her world where nature and spirit align to reveal beauty and wisdom in the gentle and ever revealing flow of giving and taking and prayer and relationship. She is the poet who writes like a mysterious and kind neighbor whom you’ve known your whole life, open but not intrusive, always discovering surprises in the silence and miracles in every nearby space and moment. Her words are both gentle and strong, companions on the road where “peace is the flower / And beauty it’s power.”—TIMOTHY SHRIVER, Chairman and CEO of Special Olympics, and Chair of Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning
“Deeply rooted and yet often playful, these poems are filled with light and kindness.”—BILL MCKIBBEN, Award-winning Environmentalist, Founder of 350.org, and Author of several bestselling books including The End of Nature, Deep Economy, eaarth, and Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance
“In Space Between Eileen Rockefeller offers us a poetic celebration of daily life and a reminder of the opportunity to find the beauty and meaning present in the ordinary. These poems are an invitation to have new eyes and live the life you have been given deeply and joyfully.”—RACHEL NAOMI REMEN MD, Author of Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s Blessings
“The soothing, often spiritual, poems in Space Between remind me of my ineffable and comforting connections with nature and those I love. Thus, again in reading them they reinforce, for me, what makes my life meaningful.”—KARE ANDERSON, Speaker, Columnist, and Author of Mutuality Matters: How You Can Create More Opportunity Adventure & Friendship With Others and Moving From Me to We
"Space Between is a body of work that reflects a lifelong commitment to writing poetry as a source of nourishment, self-empowerment and self-expression. Eileen’s poetry offers an intimate window into her soul and glimpses of the journey of a woman in transition from seeking, to having arrived and fully become herself. It’s a wellspring of gratitude for the things you can’t buy: intimacy, love, and friendship.”—JOHN BARSTOW, Editor, Space Between
“Eileen has such a lovely way with words, finding the most apt expressions of her emotions. In so many of her poems, I felt a shiver of appreciation for an unexpected, but perfect, turn of phrase, such as “helix of its art,” or “to open with your eyes” instead of the mundane “to open your eyes.” Among the poems that resonated with me the most are “Break Waters,” “Love’s Last Breath,”and “Blessing for my Children.””—MEREDITH LOURIA, Educator and Advocate
