Diane Ackerman’s long-awaited new collection of poems reveals once again her intense response to the worlds of nature, science, and society. Published in time for April’s National Poetry Month.

Ackerman’s poetry, like much of her prose, uniquely combines lyricism with sobriety and confronts us with figures both real and fantastic, both of this earth and of some other, more beautiful planet.

The last stanza of the title poem reads:

praise life’s bright catastrophes,

and all the ceremonies of grief.

praise our real estate – a shadow and a grave,

praise my destroyer,

and will continue praising

until hours run like mercury

through my fingers, hope flares a final time

in the last throes of innocence,

and all the coins of sense are spent.

Diane Ackerman has gathered the poems into something that is more than the sum of its parts – a rare event in poetry.