The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral

First published in 1973, The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral introduced not only a splendid new poet but a whole new adventure in poetry. With bravura style, unbridled imagination, and a connoisseur's eye for precise scientific detail, Diane Ackerman gives us an unforgettable ode to each of the planets in our solar system, as well as for the moon, the comet Kohoutek, asteroids, and strange voyages to the stars, the bottom of the sea, through the human body, and into the mind.

But The Planets is more than a book of poetry. It is also a major work on the solar system, illustrated with drawings and photographs of the galaxy. Diane Ackerman herself says: “I’ve always been baffled by people who write about nature only in terms of, say, junipers and cornfields, eschewing all things so-called ‘scientific,’ as if science were, per se, the spoil-sport of feeling. So wonderless a view of nature really doesn’t appeal to me; I don’t see the Universe divided up that way, into ‘The Junipers’ on the one hand and ‘The Amino Acids’ on the other.” Astronomy, fantasy, satire, myth, confession and bawdiness meet imagination and lyrical sweep to create this enticing collection, the world of The Planets.