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I Praise My Destroyer by Diane Ackerman
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I Praise My Destroyer

Poems

Poems

By Diane Ackerman

By Diane Ackerman

By Diane Ackerman

By Diane Ackerman

Best Seller
Paperback $14.00

Aug 22, 2000 | ISBN 9780679771340

Ebook $5.99

Jul 27, 2011 | ISBN 9780307763372

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    I Praise My Destroyer by Diane Ackerman
    Paperback $14.00
    Aug 22, 2000 | ISBN 9780679771340

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    • Paperback $14.00

      Aug 22, 2000 | ISBN 9780679771340

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      Jul 27, 2011 | ISBN 9780307763372

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    About I Praise My Destroyer

    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.

    About I Praise My Destroyer

    Diane Ackerman’s poems reveal her 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.

    As always, her strong connection with the natural world, the realms of language and literature, myth and imagination, combines with her deep understanding of the sciences to offer her readers a singular American voice. This is not a voice crying in the wilderness, but one that gives forth songs of joy and wonder.

    Organized into seven sections, including "Timed Talk," "By Atoms Moved," and "Tender Mercies," I Praise My Destroyer is less an assorted collection than an organically coherent whole, one that reveals Ackerman’s true calling as a twentieth-century metaphysical poet of the highest order.

    Read An Excerpt

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    Also by Diane Ackerman

    Deep Play
    A Slender Thread
    The Rarest of the Rare
    A Natural History of Love
    Jaguar of Sweet Laughter
    See all books by Diane Ackerman

    Also by Diane Ackerman

    Deep Play
    A Slender Thread
    The Rarest of the Rare
    A Natural History of Love
    Jaguar of Sweet Laughter
    See all books by Diane Ackerman

    About Diane Ackerman

    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… More about Diane Ackerman

    About Diane Ackerman

    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… More about Diane Ackerman

    Product Details

    Category: Poetry | Literary Collections

    Paperback | $14.00
    Published by Vintage
    Aug 22, 2000 | 128 Pages | 5-3/16 x 8 | ISBN 9780679771340

    Category: Poetry | Literary Collections

    Ebook | $5.99
    Published by Vintage
    Jul 27, 2011 | 128 Pages | ISBN 9780307763372
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    Praise

    "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

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