I love the language. I'm just totally fascinated by the sound and the look of words and the kinds of cadences you can create with them, the various kinds of music.

I approach writing a poem in a much different state than when I am writing prose. It's almost as if I were working in a different language when I'm writing poetry. The words - what they are and what they can become - the possibilities of the words are vastly expanded for me when I'm writing a poem.

I'm all in favor of poets telling about the process as much as they can. And many do.

I like poetry because poetry - even in free verse - is formal, and it has to be very concise and packed and rich, and I like the feeling of having to do that, having to make the language tight and still free, as if the deepest freedom is created by the restrictions.

In I Praise My Destroyer, Diane Ackerman demonstrates once again her love for the specific language that rises from the juncture of self and the natural world, and her skillful use of that language. Whether she turns her attention to the act of eating an apricot 'the color of shame and dawn,' or to 'the omnipotence of light,' or to grief when 'All the greens of summer have blown apart,' her linking of unique images, her energetic wit and whimsy, her compassionate investment in life, always bring new pleasures and perceptions to the reader.

It sounds old-fashioned to say, but we have some kind of purpose for being here, not poets or writers, but all of us humans.

As far as I can tell, writing the essays didn't change the way I wrote poetry. Although the essays contain scattered passages that might be called lyrical, they often contain closed statements of what is only suggested in the poetry.