In 1956, James Dickey resigned his teaching position at The University of Florida when his reading of the poem “The Father’s Body” to a local women’s group was construed as obscene. He took a position as an advertising copywriter and executive for the McCann-Erickson agency in New York, a position he later described as “selling his soul to the devil in the daytime and buying it back at night.” Dickey worked in the advertising business until 1961, when he received a Guggenheim Fellowship that allowed him to move his family to Italy and devote his time to writing poetry.
Poetry
Winter 1982
Ray-Flowers: I
Deborah as Winged Seed, Descending with Others As when we all fell all dayConsenting Sight-softening Time-thickening space-massing time-floating more Light Unparallelled Mortality-haze aimlessness of all noon, all afternoon I was […]
Poetry
Winter 1982
Ray-Flowers: II
II What could have slow-thrown me so vastly, So far, among surfing, softly-built distances, Somewhere in a sweeping, unobstructed Holding-pattern of lightness? Is this how I helped to cause Whole […]
Poetry
Winter 1982
Doorstep, Lightning, Waif-Dreaming
Who can tell who was born of what? I go sitting on the doorsteps of unknowns And ask, and hear nothing From the rhythmical ghosts of those others, Or from […]
Poetry
Winter 1982
Deborah in Mountain Sound: Bell, Glacier, Rose
Averaging-sound Of space-thinning space-harvesting metal— Obsessional, the outstaying Life-longing intervals, wherein, Reasonless as cloud, the male's one luminosity is frozen In a great winding winter-lust […]
Poetry
Winter 1982
The Lode
Deborah’s Rain-Longing Flash-points deadening and twining With wall: rain, and its nailed smoke —Cobbled, snailing surfaces, Jammed drops at the dead-level stroke gravity’s slow Secretional slashes on this house — […]
Poetry
Winter 1982
Deborah in Ancient Lingerie, in Thin Oak over Creek
Having found out this morning I was born Born to be hung Low down in the braced weave of plants I can do I can cling Beginning to be the all […]
Poetry
Spring 1980
Purgation
homage, Po Chü-yi Before and after the eye, grasses go over the long fields. Every season they walk on by us, as though I—no; I and you, Dear friend—decreed […]
Poetry
Summer 1965
Mangham
Somewhere between bells the right angles staggered And Mangham poised, sensing thunder, Something crookèd in the straight lines of his brain. Chalk dust rose from his shoulders, lost more Weight, […]
Book Reviews
Spring 1965
Reality’s Shifting Stages: Reviews by Five Hands
The Broken Ground by Wendell Berry. Harcourt, Brace and World, $3.95. Wendell Berry’s The Broken Ground announces the beginning of a career in poetry that probably will be more durable […]
Poetry
Spring 1964
The Second Sleep
Curled, too much curled, he was sleeping In a chair too small for him, a restless chair That held no place for his arms; In his sleep he grew legs […]
Poetry
Autumn 1961
In the Lupanar at Pompeii
There are tracks which belong to wheels Long since turned to air and time. Those are the powerful chariots I follow down cobblestones, Not being dragged, exactly, But not of […]
Poetry
Winter 1961
The Change
Blue, unstirrable, dreaming, The hammerhead goes by the boat, Passing me slowly in looking. He has singled me out from the others; He has put his blue gaze in my […]
Poetry
Autumn 1959
Awaiting the Swimmer
Light fails, in crossing a river. The current shines deeply without it. I hold a white cloth in my hands. The air turns over one leaf. One force is left […]
Spring 2012
The Change
Blue, unstirrable, dreaming,
The hammerhead goes by the boat,
Passing me slowly in looking.
He has singled me out from the others;
He has put his blue gaze in my brain.
The strength of creation sees through me: