SOURCE: Calhoun, Richard J., and Robert W. Hill. “Reaching Out to Others.” In James Dickey, pp. 25-53. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983.

In the following essay, Calhoun and Hill undertake a thematic and stylistic survey of the poetry in Dickey's second collection, Drowning With Others, occasionally comparing the volume with his earlier Into the Stone.

To speak of the poet's stance, his personality, in the second book is perhaps abstract and inexact, but Dickey becomes a more self-accepted, assertive actor instead of the relatively passive observer. Repeatedly, in Into the Stone, with poems like “The Call,” “The Vegetable King,” “The Sprinter's Sleep,” and “The Other,” Dickey's narrator is overwhelmed by Something Out Yonder. Drowning with Others (1962) proceeds with more confidence, less mincing (probably too strong a word) than that first book. It is as though the poet found his calling, to transliterate the experiences of the physical world into the...