Eagles Mile

Although departing from the narrative-based style of his past work, Dickey (one title/pk Falling, May Day Sermon, and Other Poems ) is still deeply committed to the presentation of reality in incongruous terms. His use of language itself is innovative; words are hitched together to create new, slightly unnatural juxtapositions (as in ``the fountain-twist of flight'' in the title poem). In some poems, such as ``The Olympian,'' detailing the speaker's race around a swimming pool with a rat afloat, the poet disassembles ordinary situations, filters the pieces--his language and perceptions--through his imagination, and puts them back together in such a way that his experience has become a type of hallucination. Much of the poetry examines the poet's belief in the momentum of nature, ``overcoming, coming over us / And from us,'' creating and destroying, propelling us headlong into the uncertainty of the future, never stopping to heed the authority of our rational minds. This demanding yet illuminating collection takes readers on a soaring, swooping flight to the outermost reaches of consciousness. (Nov.)