These are irresistible poems—bold, often refreshingly funny, and spiked with hard-won knowledge. "Seize the flesh and fret not," warns one of Diane Lockward's speakers. Like the creatures that pop up in this collection—rabbits, rats, bees, robins, monkeys, and more—her poems convey a living, bristling mischief. Her poems are companionable, rhythmically adventurous, and honest in the best and most happily inventive sense. Who, after all, can resist a poem titled "We Were Such a Fine Plum Pudding"? I can't. "Purity's not for us," she writes. Bless her and her poems.
          —Lee Upton

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In Temptation by Water, Diane Lockward "calculates the sum of her griefs" with a vigorous and mature poetic eye. Whether mourning the loss of a lover's touch or celebrating steam rising from the slit of a baked potato, Lockward embraces life's luscious, naked flaws and ecstatic turns, surrendering to desire and what's left in "the wreckage of absence."
          —Dorianne Laux


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Winner of the 2006 Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize

What Feeds Us is sometimes humorous and sometimes heartbreaking. Diane Lockward's language is both plain-spoken and rich, lush. This is a wonderful book that might not nourish your body but certainly will nourish your heart.
          —Thomas Lux


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Cognizant of loss but always celebratory, Lockward's poems are irreverent, ravenous for the world, and unabashedly female. When, in "Losing the Blues," she writes, "I could burn / the hands off a man,'"you have no doubt that she is singing a true song.
          —Kim Addonizio


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