Synopses & Reviews
Letter to Dr. B --
(but not the textures) of your life,
in the library of your cunning,
where the abstracts of forty papers
open, one by one, like small windows
partly sealed by terminology's lacquer.
They reveal you both aloof and enthralled,
a restless mind of intersecting planes.
How can I resist the paper "Artist and Analyst"?
Yet I do, thinking it best to stay
within the frame we've chosen,
using the palette we invent,
creating a mosaic in motion.
Whenever I set a shard in place,
the mosaic evolves, blurs a moment,
then a new scene refines, throwing past into relief,
drawing present into mind.
So I will sacrifice my yen to know
the what and whim of you. Though my curiosity
is swelling like a Magellanic Cloud
filled with a luminous starfield of questions,
I'll sacrifice them on the altar of our ineffable
cause. A padded altar. A cause quilted with passion,
and insight whose razors cut clean as thrill.
A sacrifice intoxicating as any pill.
Pandora's Sunday Morning
You appear in darkness,
like the slowly forming crystals
of remembered thought,
eyelessly, where the brain paints
neon brush strokes
and phantoms prowl
among symbols of unrest.
While I am treading the fragile catwalk
between sleep and wakefulness,
you appear without your glasses
out in your usual chair.
I sit across from you in a floral dress.
The air trembles
with the thick smoke of emotion
as, sitting quite still,
I struggle hard towards you:
an elation like love and not like love,
a waking trancefor two
powered by the interplay
of heart and mind
harnessed to work in unison.
as the arms of a great river
closing on the soft embankments
of my life, muscling into sanity.
I have no word for this tug-of-war
whose silk rasps fiery knots
through my ribs. The verb lies somewhere
between "tempt and "fear.
It is not like a moaning,
but urgent as tears. I imagine
you can hear it humming in my bones.
Review
“Witty and honest … [ORIGAMI BRIDGES] is a resounding success.” Library Journal
Synopsis
At the heart of Origami Bridges is the delicate relationship of trust between analyst and patient, a relationship that grows out of the emotional give-and-take of the psychoanalytic process. In this collection, Diane Ackerman, with astonishing candor, lays bare her desires, anger, jealousy, fears, and anxiety, as she probes not only her present emotional landscape but also her past. And what gradually rises to the surface is an understanding of how the poet uses verse to purge her demons, express her delight, or confess secret longing, and through this process come to a better understanding of the self.
About the Author
Poet, essayist, and naturalist, Diane Ackerman is the author of many highly acclaimed works of nonfiction, including
A Natural History of the Senses -- a book beloved by readers all over the worldand the volumes
Deep Play, A Slender Thread, The Rarest of the Rare, A Natural History of Love, The Moon by Whale Light, and a memoir on flying,
On Extended Wings.Her poetry has been collected into six volumes, among them Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems and, most recently, Praise My Destroyer.
Ms. Ackerman has received many prizes and awards, including the John Burroughs Nature Award and the Lavan Poetry Prize. A Visiting Professor at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, she was the National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Professor at the University of Richmond. Ms. Ackerman also has the unusual distinction of having had a molecule named after her -- dianeackerone. She lives in upstate New York.