JAGUAR OF SWEET LAUGHTER
In A Natural History of the Senses Diane Ackerman revealed herself as a naturalist who writes with the sensuous immediately of a great poet. Now Jaguar of Sweet Laughter presents the work of a poet with the precise and wondering eye of a gifted naturalist.
Ackerman's Olympian vision records and transforms landscapes from Amazonia to Antarctica, while her imaginative empathy penetrates the otherness of hummingbirds, deer, and trilobites. But even as they draw readers into the wild heart of nature, Ackerman's poems are indelible reminders of what it is to be a human being — the "jaguar of sweet laughter" that, according to Mayan mythology, astonished the world because it was the first animal to speak.
REVIEWS AND COMMENTS
“A star soprano, dazzling the audience with range. With this book, Ackerman is at the height of her powers articulating important themes and concerns of the day, using myriad forms... and not shying away from celebration, wit, image, or humor — all the while employing a diction amazing in its scope, without sounding forced, contrived, or obscure. Clearly, the new and selected work of Jaguar will resound for years to come. — Southern Humanities Review
"Diane Ackerman is the great dramatist and explorer of the sensual world; her poems probe, open, take off lids, peel back covers, taste, sniff. There is no limit to her curiosity, and she is constantly discovering surprises." —
The New York Times Book Review