The James Dickey Reader

Brassy, raw and, at times, enduringly powerful, the poetry of James Dickey (1923-1997) made big waves in the 1960s and '70s; he's now best known for his first novel, Deliverance (1970), a tale of male trauma and violence in the Georgia wilderness and the source of John Boorman's 1972 film. Dickey's other productions include the mammoth novel Alnilam (1987) and several books of criticism. Hart, a professor at the College of William and Mary, has assembled excerpts from all of Dickey's novels, along with his yearning, provocative essays and 116 pages of Dickey's poems--early, Roethkeish apprentice stanzas; disturbing, prizewinning '60s poems like ""Buckdancer's Choice"" and ""Power and Light""; and the all-but-unreadable long-lined narratives of Dickey's final phase. Dickey's anguished celebrations of destructive extremes, hard men and hard drinking can make his work seem dated, even embarrassing (""God man hunter artist father/ Be with me.... Give me my spear""). But Dickey's best poems make his frustrations, and his mythographic ambitions, sources of memorably tormented potency. No one else could have created ""The Sheep-Child,"" whose speaker--the impossible offspring of farm boys' bestiality--""saw for a blazing moment/ The great grassy world from both sides... My hoof and my hand clasped each other,/ I ate my one meal/ Of milk, and died/ Staring."" Dickey's essays, reflections on the lives and goals of modern American poets, stand up surprisingly well. After Dickey's son's memoir, Summer of Deliverance, has darkened the South Carolina poet's image, this generous compilation does much to bolster his literary prominence. (Aug.)