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Book Cover for: Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems, Diane Ackerman

Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems

Diane Ackerman

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.

Ackermans'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.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  • Publish Date: Jul 27th, 1993
  • Pages: 272
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.06in - 5.24in - 0.61in - 0.50lb
  • EAN: 9780679743040
  • Categories: American - GeneralSubjects & Themes - Animals & NatureWomen Authors

About the Author

Diane Ackerman has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in addition to garnering many other awards and recognitions for her work, which include the bestselling The Zookeeper's Wife and A Natural History of the Senses. She lives in Ithaca, 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: I Praise My Destroyer: Poems, Diane Ackerman
Book Cover for: Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day, 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

"Her best poems keep bursting off the prescribed limits of the page...in the same way that great paintings burst their frames... Ackerman has energy, wit, courage, and passion... All of her is in each poem, and this 'all' reveals a woman of sensitivity, restraint, ingenuity, and passionate daring."

-- Hudson Review


"I know enough to know when I'm in the presence of a brilliant mind. Her acrobatic poems are full of fact and exuberance."

-- Maxine Kumin

"The best lyric poet now writing in the United States."

-- Review