SOURCE: Cassity, Turner. “Double Dutch.” Parnassus 8, no. 2 (1980): 177-93.

In the following mixed review of The Strength of Fields and The Zodiac, Cassity questions stylistic elements of Dickey's poetry.

If you write in lines so long that your book has to be printed sideways, it seems to me you might well reconsider your methods. However, James Dickey has always been the least succinct of poets, and here, in a grand horizontal sprawl, is The Strength of Fields, a collection of lyrics and of adaptations from other languages. Dickey writes with undiminished vigor, but I am not sure I can say this as praise. Intellectually, he is so seldom on secure ground that he ought perhaps to proceed with caution.

His title poem, for example, is in direct contradiction to the Warren Court. It seems to say that politicians do represent trees and stones.

                              Men are not where he is...