Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems

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.

Author: Diane Ackerman
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 07/27/1993
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 8.06h x 5.24w x 0.61d
ISBN: 9780679743040

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 07/26/1993

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.