James Dickey published fifteen books of poetry, four collections of essays, four coffee-table books, three novels, and one screenplay. His book of poetry Buckdancer's Choice received the National Book Award, the Poetry Society of America's Melville Cane Award, and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. His bestselling first novel, Deliverance, was made into a movie. He was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and was Poet-in-Residence and First Carolina Professor of English at the University of South Carolina from 1969 until his death in 1997.

Contents

Introduction

Poetry

Introduction

From Into the Stone

The Vegetable King

The Performance

The Other

Walking on Water

Into the Stone

From Drowning with Others

The Lifeguard

The Heaven of Animals

A Birth

Fog Envelops the Animals

Between Two Prisoners

Hunting Civil War Relics at Nimblewill Creek

The Hospital Window

From Helmets

At Darien Bridge

Chenille

Springer Mountain

Cherrylog Road

The Scarred Girl

From Buckdancer's Choice

The Firebombing

Buckdancer's Choice

Pursuit from Under

Sled Burial, Dream Ceremony

The Fiend

From Falling, May Day Sermon, and Other Poems

Falling

The Sheep Child

Power and Light

Adultery

Encounter in the Cage Country

May Day Sermon to the Women of Gilmer County, Georgia, by a Woman Preacher Leaving the Baptist Church

From The Eye-Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead and Mercy

The Eye-Beaters

From The Zodiac

The Zodiac (Section I, excerpt; Section XII)

From The Strength of Fields

The Strength of Fields

The Voyage of the Needle

From Puella

Deborah Burning a Doll Made of House-wood

Deborah and Deirdre as Drunk Bridesmaids Foot-racing at Daybreak

From The Eagle's Mile

Daughter

The Olympian

For a Time and Place

Early Poems

The Shark at the Window

Joel Cahill Dead

The Wish to Be Buried Where One Has Made Love

The Wheelchair Drunk

Reading Genesis to a Blind Child

Fiction

From Deliverance

"September 15th" (excerpt)

From Alnilam

Frank Cahill's Journey to Peckover Army Air Corps Base (excerpt)

Peckover Graduation Ceremony (excerpt)

From To the White Sea

The Firebombing of Tokyo (excerpt)

Muldrow's First Murder (excerpt)

From Crux (unpublished novel)

Journey to War

Criticism

From Babel to Byzantium: Poets & Poetry Now

Barnstorming for Poetry

Notes on the Decline of Outrage

Robert Frost

Marianne Moore

From Sorties

The Self as Agent

Metaphor as Pure Adventure

Spinning the Crystal Ball

The Greatest American Poet: Roethke

From Night Hurdling

The Water-Bug's Mittens: Ezra Pound: What We Can Use

The G.I. Can of Beets, the Fox in the Wave, and the Hammers over Open Ground

Bare Bones: Afterword to a Film

Chronology