Josephine Jacobsen was born in Ontario, Canada, and educated at Roland Park Country School by private tutors. She published her first poem at the age of ten in a children’s magazine and continued to publish poems, short stories, and literary criticism for the next eight decades. She received many honors, including an appointment as the poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, a position which allowed her to help many young writers. In her own poetry, Jacobsen uses animal and nature imagery to explore themes of identity, isolation, and the relationship between the physical and spiritual, all while reconciling her love of this world with the fact of death.