In the following essay, Oates studies Dickey's collections from Into the Stone, to Eye-Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead and Mercy, addressing his development and principal poetic themes, and highlighting Dickey's unique expression of man's instinctual savagery.

In the following excerpt from an essay, Oates traces Dickey's poetic development.

In the following excerpt from an essay, Oates traces Dickey's poetic development.

In the following essay, Hart investigates the ways in which Dickey's wartime experiences affected his poetic sensibility.

In the following essay, Hart investigates the ways in which Dickey's wartime experiences affected his poetic sensibility.

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.

In the following essay, Kirschten expresses the magical, mythopoeic mode of Dickey's verse.

[In the following essay, Kirschten asserts that Dickey's The Eye-Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead and Mercy "constitutes one of the central transitional texts in Dickey's poeticcanon."]

[In the following essay, Kirschten analyzes the significance of the stewardess in Dickey's "Falling."]

In the following essay, Smith views Dickey in the context of a Southern writer.

In the following essay, Smith views Dickey in the context of a Southern writer.

In the following review of The Central Motion: Poems, 1968-1979, Christensen considers Dickey's Southerness and evaluates his poetry of middle age from the collections Eye-Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead and Mercy (1970), The Zodiac (1976), and The Strength of Fields (1979).

In the following essay, Christensen contends that the problem with The Central Motion: Poems, 1968-1979 is that Dickey “has tried to deal with middle age, his own, and fails to perceive in it value or meaning.”

In the following essay, Christensen contends that the problem with The Central Motion: Poems, 1968-1979 is that Dickey “has tried to deal with middle age, his own, and fails to perceive in it value or meaning.”

[In the following interview, conducted in August, 1989, Dickey discusses his work, his life, and his political and literary ideas.]

[In the following essay, Lieberman asserts that Muldrow, the main character in Dickey's To the White Sea, "serves as a kind of contemplative mouthpiece for the author and … embodies many of the wisdoms and lessons of Dickey's poetry."]

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.”

In the following essay, Bidney underscores the relationship between Dickey's Deliverance and the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

In the following essay, Bidney underscores the relationship between Dickey's Deliverance and the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

In the following essay, Calhoun and Hill discuss Dickey's reputation and work as a literary critic.

In the following essay, Calhoun and Hill discuss Dickey's reputation and work as a literary critic.

In the following essay, Van Ness surveys the central thematic concerns of and the critical reaction to Dickey's nonfiction.

In the following essay, Van Ness surveys the central thematic concerns of and the critical reaction to Dickey's nonfiction.

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

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

In the following essay, Van Ness traces Dickey's use of the mythic archetype of the “Queen Goddess” and idealization of women in such works as “Adultery,” “The Fiend,” Puella, and other less well known poems.

In the following essay, Hart addresses the problems in researching Dickey's life story, asserting that “nearly everything Dickey said about his life was an embroidery of fiction and fact.”

In the following essay, Hart addresses the problems in researching Dickey's life story, asserting that “nearly everything Dickey said about his life was an embroidery of fiction and fact.”

In the following essay, Fraser records his impressions of Dickey's poetic voice and style.

[In the following essay, Bidney traces the influence of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's writing in Dickey's Deliverance.]

In the following essay, Smith describes Dickey's “poetic faith” as a sense of belief in nature illustrated most clearly in his hunting poems and in the mystic visions of his 1970 volume Eye-Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead and Mercy.

In the following essay, Spears places Dickey and his work within the context of the Southern literary tradition.

In the following essay, Spears places Dickey and his work within the context of the Southern literary tradition.

In the following review, Mills explores Dickey's almost mystical poetic process and his characteristic themes—including the spiritual interpenetration of the living and the dead—but criticizes his lack of imagination in works like “The Firebombing,” and observes a diminishing intensity in his later poems.

[In the following essay, Butterworth discusses the savage side of man portrayed in Dickey's Deliverance and analyzes how characterization structures the novel.]

In the following essay, Butterworth provides an interpretation of the psychological aspects of Deliverance.

In the following essay, Butterworth provides an interpretation of the psychological aspects of Deliverance.

In the following essay, Mizejewski explores the confessional poetry of The Zodiac, focusing on Dickey's poetic persona.

In the following essay, Mizejewski explores the confessional poetry of The Zodiac, focusing on Dickey's poetic persona.

In the following essay, Suarez juxtaposes Dickey's novel with the film version of Deliverance.

In the following essay, Strange identifies dream and memory as the main thematic concerns of the poems comprising Buckdancer's Choice.

In the following essay, Strange identifies dream and memory as the main thematic concerns of the poems comprising Buckdancer's Choice.

In the following review, Tillinghast provides a laudatory overview of Dickey's poetic career.

In the following essay, Hill highlights Dickey's comic poetic vision, even as it frequently manifests amidst tragic circumstances.

In the following essay, Baughman examines the principal poems of Buckdancer's Choice, illuminating significant themes and mentioning Dickey's sustained evocation of human ambivalence and equivocation.

In the following review of Dickey's Poems: 1957-1967, originally published in 1967, Lieberman remarks on Dickey's poetic vision and its mixture of the comic and the serious.

In the following essay, Schmitt maintains that Dickey provides an ironic treatment of the mythical hero in his novel Deliverance.

In the following essay, Schmitt maintains that Dickey provides an ironic treatment of the mythical hero in his novel Deliverance.

In the following essay, Baughman explores the theme of renewal in Deliverance.

In the following essay, Baughman explores the theme of renewal in Deliverance.

In the following essay, Donoghue chronicles Dickey's life and career, his poetic development and influences, and his popular success combined with literary decline.

In the following review, Donoghue discusses Dickey's public persona as well as poets that influenced his writing, particularly Theodore Roethke.

In the following review, Donoghue discusses Dickey's public persona as well as poets that influenced his writing, particularly Theodore Roethke.

In the following essay, Laurence analyzes the volume Puella, emphasizing a movement toward the aesthetic “possession” of its female subject and a balancing stylistic quality of “lightness” in the poems.

In the following unfavorable assessment, Meyers derides the errors in and superficial treatment of Dickey's collected letters.

In the following unfavorable assessment, Meyers derides the errors in and superficial treatment of Dickey's collected letters.

In the following essay, Bobbitt focuses on Dickey's often grotesque poetic juxtaposition of the world of nature and the world of man.

In the following essay, Baughman examines the symbolic meaning of the settings in Alnilam.

In the following essay, Baughman examines the symbolic meaning of the settings in Alnilam.

In the following essay, Calhoun surveys the weakness in Dickey's Self-Interviews and The Eye-Beaters.

In the following essay, Calhoun surveys the weakness in Dickey's Self-Interviews and The Eye-Beaters.

In the following essay, Brewer perceives the storylines of Dickey's two novels as interpretations of the passage of the mythical hero as detailed in Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

In the following essay, Brewer perceives the storylines of Dickey's two novels as interpretations of the passage of the mythical hero as detailed in Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

In the following favorable review of Babel to Byzantium, Carroll examines the critical backlash against Dickey's work.

In the following favorable review of Babel to Byzantium, Carroll examines the critical backlash against Dickey's work.

In the following review of Puella, Applewhite admires the diversity and taut clarity of this poetic collection.

[In the following essay, Tapply argues that Dickey's Deliverance is among the great novels of American culture.]

In the following essay, originally published in 1968, Lieberman presents commentary on Dickey's innovative and varied use of poetic symbolism and form.

[In the following obituary, Krebs presents a detailed review of Dickey's life and career.]

Leonard Lutwack, in Heroic Fiction, has stated that Melville's Moby-Dick introduced "unequivocally the spirit of the epic to American fiction by daring to endow native materials with qualities of the heroic past."… James Dickey's Deliverance … fits the ancient pattern more closely than any of the novels Lutwack chooses to discuss (it seems, in fact, an almost perfect embodiment of Joseph Campbell's "monomyth"). (p. 128) In a time when the suspic...

In the following review of Drowning With Others, Nemerov offers an impressionistic, then critical, assessment of Dickey's second volume of poetry.

[James Dickey is a] poet whose best work has always been charged with the presence of the master performer. The best of his Poems 1957–1967 work like an ideal, reversed ending of the Oz story: the curtain might be pulled aside for a glimpse of the professor working the levers to produce the sound effects and smoke, but the wizardry—contrived as it may be—continues anyway, and with a great deal of success. There is no demand for a return to the farm in Kansas—or Georgia—whe...

In the following essay, which was initially published in 1987, Starr considers the major thematic concerns of Dickey's Alnilam.

In the following essay, which was initially published in 1987, Starr considers the major thematic concerns of Dickey's Alnilam.

When Ed Gentry, the narrator of James Dickey's Deliverance, stands over the corpse of the man he has killed with a bow and arrow, he waits for an impulse. "It is not ever going to be known; you can do what you want to; nothing is too terrible. I can cut off the genitals he was going to use on me. Or I can cut off his head, looking straight into his open eyes. Or I can eat him." The impulse does not come, "but the ultimate horror circled me and played over the knife." Ed di...

In the following essay, Van Ness summarizes the critical reception of Dickey's two volumes of children's poetry.

In the following essay, Thompson considers the “heraldic symbolism” found in Dickey's Deliverance.

In the following essay, Thompson considers the “heraldic symbolism” found in Dickey's Deliverance.

In the following excerpt, Gwynn compares Dickey's work and declining critical reputation to that of the Georgian poets, especially Rupert Brooke.

In the following excerpt, Gwynn compares Dickey's work and declining critical reputation to that of the Georgian poets, especially Rupert Brooke.

In the following excerpt, Morris provides a negative assessment of Poems, 1957-1967, calling the poems in the volume dull, awkward, and stylistically inferior.

In the following excerpt, Morris provides a negative assessment of Poems, 1957-1967, calling the poems in the volume dull, awkward, and stylistically inferior.

Throughout his poetry, Dickey employs shockingly bizarre or ludicrous images to communicate the alien position of nature in the "civilized" world. Indeed, the juxtaposition of the world of nature and the world of man often leads to grotesque incongruities. Things seem severely twisted by comparison. In the sea, the shark finds a natural home: in the parlor, its presence becomes unnatural. The poet sees civilization as so far removed from nature, its primal antecedent, that only such aberration...

In the following unfavorable review, Plumly asserts that The Zodiac is “overwhelmed by its own ambition.”

In the following unfavorable review, Plumly asserts that The Zodiac is “overwhelmed by its own ambition.”

[In the following review, Curran states that Dickey's To the White Sea "becomes a quest for the pure ecstasy that identification with nature will grant Muldrow."]

In the following essay, Rich construes Dickey's poem “The Firebombing” as implicating the reader in its speaker's guilt.

[In the following review, Rich asserts that Dickey's poem "The Firebombing" "can be shown to implicate the reader in the blame for the firebombing of Japan during World War II."]

[In the following review, Johnson asserts that Dickey's To the White Sea "is less ambitious and in some ways less accomplished than his previous novels."]

[In the following review, Wiley discusses the main theme of Dickey's To the White Sea.]

In the following excerpt, Hassan contrasts the two main characters—Ed and Lewis—in Dickey's novel Deliverance.

In the following excerpt, Hassan contrasts the two main characters—Ed and Lewis—in Dickey's novel Deliverance.

In the following review of The Zodiac, French notes that Dickey's ambitious poem is deeply flawed and improperly realized.

In the following review, French provides a negative assessment of The Zodiac.

In the following review, French provides a negative assessment of The Zodiac.

[In the following review, Melmoth calls Dickey's To the White Sea "a bitterly cold novel" that "is not for those of a nervous disposition."]

In the following excerpted review of Dickey's The Selected Poems, Gwynn acknowledges the energy of the poet's early verse, unfortunately underrepresented in this collection.

[The] protagonist of Dickey's [The Zodiac], a Dutch poet who uses the expression "Old Buddy," is a drunk. One would have hoped that the romantic image of the whiskey-poet had been finally smashed by Berryman's suicide. Not so. Alcohol and creativity go hand in hand for this poet…. More of a tour de force than the mesmerizing "Falling" or the brilliantly Gothic "May Day Sermon," The Zodiac marks a new departure for Dickey in that it is derivative...

In the following review, Berry describes some of the poems in Helmets as clumsy and mechanical.

In the following review, Berry describes some of the poems in Helmets as clumsy and mechanical.

In the following essay, Lensing offers a negative review of The Eye-Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead, and Mercy.

In the following essay, Lensing offers a negative review of The Eye-Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead, and Mercy.

[In the following review, Pratt discusses the language in The Eagle's Mile.]

"[The Zodiac] is based on another of the same title by Hendrik Marsman", Dickey explains, and "with the exception of a few lines, is completely my own." "Based" is the warranted word. Part I of Dickey's poem is almost as long (414 lines) as the whole of Marsman's (422), Parts II-XII even longer. But the telling difference grows out of the two conceptions of the hero: "A drunken Dutch poet who returns to his home in Amsterdam after years of trave...

[The poems in The Strength of Fields] float down overwide pages, contract to a single word or expand across the page, lapse into italics, skip over blank intervals. They are like richly modulated hollers; a sort of rough, American-style bel canto advertising its freedom from the constraints of ordinary language. Dickey's style is so personal, his rhythms so willfully eccentric, that the poems seem to swell up and overflow like that oldest of American art forms, the boast…. "The Strength...

Unfortunately, none of the poems (or translations "from the UnEnglish") in The Strength of Fields measures up to "The Performance," "The Sheep-Child" or "Falling." In recent years Dickey has forsaken traditional meter for a broken line using a "gap technique," somewhat reminiscent of late William Carlos Williams. At times he has employed it with splendid effect—especially in "Butterflies" where his typographical fragm...

[None of the poems in Dickey's The Strength of Fields] compares with his best, yet readers who know and like his work will feel at home. World War II still echoes…. Redemption through love, dumb luck, poetry, is still possible. Water, that life-threatening, life-renewing force, is pervasive, as always, in pool, river, ocean, rain, perspiration. Though there are no poems here as stunning as "Drinking From a Helmet" or "The Lifeguard," "The Voyage of the Needle...

["The Zodiac"] is consistently demanding, characteristically eloquent and often in an original way, and sometimes magnificent. I can think of no poem since Hart Crane's "The Bridge" that is so stylistically ambitious and has aimed to stir such depths of emotion. Like "The Bridge" (and most works of man's hand) this poem has certain limitations and defects that may provoke quarrel: for instance, the structural principle of progression for the first seve...

[In the following excerpt, Mackinnon condemns Dickey's The Eagle's Mile as "a clanging, overweening collection."]

As a reviewer, I find myself somewhat intimidated, even awed by this beautiful, ambitious concert of effort. Artist (Marvin Hayes) and Poet (James Dickey) have combined talents to produce [God's Images] a new vehicle through which to experience the Bible. Biblical events and personalities come alive in a series of fifty-three striking etchings, each accompanied by a reflective, poetic meditation….

Dickey, after the lapse of his later poems,… ventures everything in The Zodiac, a longish poem of some 30 pages loosely based upon a modern Dutch original. Dickey's "drunken and perhaps dying Dutch poet" speaks for Dickey's own will-to-power over language and the universe of sense, a will so monomaniac as to resemble Ahab's, rather than Melville's. The Zodiac is obsessive and perhaps even hysterical verse, and after a number of readings I am helpless to say w...