The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: I Praise My Destroyer: Poems, Diane Ackerman

I Praise My Destroyer: Poems

Diane Ackerman

In her first new book of poetry since Jaguar of Sweet Laughter, poet and naturalist Diane Ackerman combines her deep understanding of the world with her immense passion for language to craft richly sensual poems that "honor all life/wherever and in whatever form/it may deal."

Imbued with ravishing imagery, these exuberant and lyrical explorations of aging, longing, and death demonstrate Ackerman's full engagement with every aspect of life's process. Ackerman muses on the confines of therapy sessions, where she intersects "twice a week/in a painstaking hide-and-seek/making do with half-light, half-speak"; relishes the succulent pleasure of eating an apricot, with its "gush of taboo sweetness"; and imagines the "unupholstered voice, a life in outline" in her stunning elegy to C. S. Lewis. Whimsical, organic, and wise, the poems in I Praise My Destroyer affirm Ackerman's place as one of the most enchanting poets writing today.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  • Publish Date: Aug 22nd, 2000
  • Pages: 128
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 7.97in - 5.22in - 0.41in - 0.35lb
  • EAN: 9780679771340
  • Categories: American - GeneralWomen AuthorsAmerican - General

More books to explore

Book Cover for: Song, Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Book Cover for: Snowflake/Different Streets, Eileen Myles
Book Cover for: Red Suitcase, Naomi Shihab Nye
Book Cover for: Museum of Accidents, Rachel Zucker
Book Cover for: What We Carry, Dorianne Laux
Book Cover for: Being Reflected Upon, Alice Notley
Book Cover for: American Melancholy: Poems, Joyce Carol Oates
Book Cover for: Beloved Idea, Ann Killough
Book Cover for: Selected Poems: 1950-2012, Adrienne Rich
Book Cover for: Collected Poems, Ellen Bryant Voigt

About the Author

Diane Ackerman lives in upstate New york.

More books by Diane Ackerman

Book Cover for: A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman
Book Cover for: The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story, Diane Ackerman
Book Cover for: Deep Play, Diane Ackerman
Book Cover for: Moon By Whale Light: And Other Adventures Among Bats, Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales, Diane Ackerman
Book Cover for: An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain, Diane Ackerman
Book Cover for: A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman
Book Cover for: A Slender Thread: Rediscovering Hope at the Heart of Crisis, Diane Ackerman
Book Cover for: Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day, Diane Ackerman
Book Cover for: Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems, Diane Ackerman
Book Cover for: The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds, Diane Ackerman
Book Cover for: Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden, Diane Ackerman
Book Cover for: One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing, Diane Ackerman
Book Cover for: The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us, Diane Ackerman
Book Cover for: One Hundred Names for Love, Diane Ackerman
Book Cover for: The Planets: A Cosmic Pastroal, Diane Ackerman

Praise for this book

"Brilliant . . . Ackerman expresses her signature love for the world in all its seething glory. . . . Her sensuality is still in full force." --Booklist

"[These poems are] full of physical participation in the world, human involvement, and (as one might expect of this scholar of the senses) an eloquent eye." --Richard Wilbur

"Vivid, playful, abundant, these poems constitute a directory of colors, an assembly of weathers, waters, creatures, and a bold, brash, invincible vote of confidence." --Anthony Hecht

"[Ackerman's] poems express a sense of sheer joy in physical existence, which she explores in language that has its own intense life. The book is a pure pleasure." --Louis Simpson