Synopses & Reviews
Diane Ackerman's long-awaited new collection of poems reveals once again her intense response to the worlds of nature, science, and society. Published in time for April's National Poetry Month.
Ackerman's poetry, like much of her prose, uniquely combines lyricism with sobriety and confronts us with figures both real and fantastic, both of this earth and of some other, more beautiful planet.
The last stanza of the title poem reads:
"praise life's bright catastrophes,
and all the ceremonies of grief.
praise our real estate -- a shadow and a grave,
praise my destroyer,
and will continue praising
until hours run like mercury
through my fingers, hope flares a final time
in the last throes of innocence,
and all the coins of sense are spent."
Diane Ackerman has gathered the poems into something that is more than the sum of its parts -- a rare event in poetry.
Synopsis
Diane Ackerman's poems reveal her intense response to the several worlds of nature, science, and society. Her lyricism fuses wit and sobriety, meditation and activism, and she confronts us with figures both real and fantastic.
As always, her strong connection with the natural world, the realms of language and literature, myth and imagination, combines with her deep understanding of the sciences to offer her readers a singular American voice. This is not a voice crying in the wilderness, but one that gives forth songs of joy and wonder.
Organized into seven sections, including "Timed Talk," "By Atoms Moved," and "Tender Mercies," I Praise My Destroyer is less an assorted collection than an organically coherent whole, one that reveals Ackerman's true calling as a twentieth-century metaphysical poet of the highest order.
About the Author
Diane Ackerman, a poet, essayist, and naturalist, received her M.A., M.F.A., and Ph.D. from Cornell University. Her poetry has been published in leading literary journals, and in the books The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral; Wife of Light; Lady Faustus; Reverse Thunder: A Dramatic Poem; and Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems.
Her works of nonfiction include A Slender Thread; The Rarest of the Rare; A Natural History of the Senses; A Natural History of Love; the critically acclaimed The Moon by Whale Light and Other Adventures Among Bats, Crocodilians, Penguins, and Whales; and On Extended Wings, her memoir of flying. Monk Seal Hideaway and Bats: Shadows in the Night are two of her books for children.
She has received many prizes, including the Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets. She has taught at a variety of universities, including Columbia and Cornell. Her essays about nature and human nature have appeared in National Geographic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Parade.