SOURCE: Bloom, Harold. “James Dickey: From ‘The Other’ through the The Early Motion.” Southern Review 21, no. 1 (winter 1985): 63-78.

In the following essay, Bloom assesses Dickey's pre-1965 poetry, commenting on such pieces as “The Other,” “Drowning With Others,” “In the Mountain Tent,” “Approaching Prayer,” and “Drinking from a Helmet.”

I first read James Dickey's early poem, “The Other,” some twenty years ago. Having admired his recently published book, Drowning With Others, I went back to his first book, Into the Stone, at the recommendation of a close friend, the poet Alvin Feinman. Though very moved by several of the earlier poems, I was affected most strongly by the one called “The Other.” It has taken me twenty years to understand why the poem still will not let me go, and so I begin with it here. I don't think of Dickey as a poet primarily of otherness, but rather...