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Reverse Thunder: A Dramatic Poem
A dramatization of the passion of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a Mexican nun regarded as one of her country's greatest poets.
97 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
28 people want to read
About the author
Diane Ackerman
71 books1,104 followersDiane Ackerman has been the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in addition to many other awards and recognitions for her work, which include the bestsellers The Zookeeper’s Wife and A Natural History of the Senses.
The Zookeeper’s Wife, a little known true story of WWII, became a New York Times bestseller, and received the Orion Book Award, which honored it as, "a groundbreaking work of nonfiction." A movie of The Zookeeper’s Wife, starring Jessica Chastain and Daniel Brühl, releases in theaters March 31st, 2017 from Focus Features.
She lives with her husband Paul West in Ithaca, New York.
The Zookeeper’s Wife, a little known true story of WWII, became a New York Times bestseller, and received the Orion Book Award, which honored it as, "a groundbreaking work of nonfiction." A movie of The Zookeeper’s Wife, starring Jessica Chastain and Daniel Brühl, releases in theaters March 31st, 2017 from Focus Features.
She lives with her husband Paul West in Ithaca, New York.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 28, 2011
This play (which has never had a full production as far as I can tell, only a couple of staged readings) fictionalizes the later years of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. The genius of this seventeenth-century poet, and her destruction at the hands of the Church, make a subject that has tempted many fiction writers.
There's lots of fine language here. Diane Ackerman is a competent poet, and few writers can enthuse about the beauties of a tide pool as well as she can. Her sympathy with Sor Juana's interest in natural history and the sciences provides the best passages. But it's as drama, and especially as history, that this play fails to convince me. There's a scene where other nuns read and applaud Sor Juana's autobiography in a way that's too obviously a proxy for the author's and other modern readers' responses. There's at least one clear anachronism. But the overwhelming problem is that the play is overwhelmed by a wholly invented love affair that Ackerman chooses to make the center of the whole plot, even supposing that the transformation of Sor Juana's way of living in the final years of her life was nearly as much due to a broken heart as to whatever pressure the clerics put on her. Indeed, this provides a conventional sort of "plot", complete with last-minute reversal, which is ill-fitted to the subject -- the last scene does not escape bathos and the central character is lost in it.
There's lots of fine language here. Diane Ackerman is a competent poet, and few writers can enthuse about the beauties of a tide pool as well as she can. Her sympathy with Sor Juana's interest in natural history and the sciences provides the best passages. But it's as drama, and especially as history, that this play fails to convince me. There's a scene where other nuns read and applaud Sor Juana's autobiography in a way that's too obviously a proxy for the author's and other modern readers' responses. There's at least one clear anachronism. But the overwhelming problem is that the play is overwhelmed by a wholly invented love affair that Ackerman chooses to make the center of the whole plot, even supposing that the transformation of Sor Juana's way of living in the final years of her life was nearly as much due to a broken heart as to whatever pressure the clerics put on her. Indeed, this provides a conventional sort of "plot", complete with last-minute reversal, which is ill-fitted to the subject -- the last scene does not escape bathos and the central character is lost in it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review