POETRY
ORIGAMI BRIDGES
"She makes the task of putting words to the wordless seem effortless." — Manchester Journal Inquirer
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.
I PRAISE MY DESTROYER
"Vivid, playful, abundant, these poems constitute a directory of colors, an assembly of weathers, waters, creatures, and bold, brash, invincible vote of confidence." — Anthony Hecht
Poems, revealing Ms. Ackerman's 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. This is not a voice crying in the wilderness, but one that gives forth songs of joy and wonder. I Praise My Destroyer reveals Ackerman's true calling as a twentieth-century metaphysical poet of the highest order.
REVERSE THUNDER
"Only Diane Ackerman, a sister spirit of this seventeenth-century sister, could have woven so rich a fabric into this dramatic poem." — Philip Appleman
The remarkable Juana Inés de la Cruz, a woman tragically and triumphantly ahead of her time, comes to life again in Diane Ackerman's eloquent, witty, and poignant drama.
JAGUAR OF SWEET LAUGHTER
"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
The work of a poet with the precise and wondering eye of a gifted naturalist. 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.
LADY FAUSTUS
"Lyrical elegance, authority of voice, unique vision, and vast poetical range can't encompass Ackerman's talent and the enormous scope of Lady Faustus, her third collection." — Mid-American Review
Diane Ackerman's third book of poetry, covering learning how to fly, to dreaming, and knowing how to dream, and probing the worlds of possibility and curiosity.
WIFE OF LIGHT
"Her best poems keep bursting the prescribed limits of the pages on which they are printed in the same way that great paintings burst their frames." — The Hudson Review
Diane Ackerman's second book of poetry.
THE PLANETS: A Cosmic Pastoral
"A graceful and important pas de deux. Not since the Eighteenth Century have scientific fact and imaginative fancy been so thoroughly joined in a single set of poems." — The Hollins Critic
Astronomy, fantasy, satire, myth, confession and bawdiness meet imagination and lyrical sweep to create this enticing collection, the world of The Planets. This unique and wonderful book of poems is also a major work on the solar system — illustrated with drawings and photographs of the galaxy.