James Dickey
 

Or, my defense of James Dickey.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...cherrylog-road

I liked him when I was an adolescent, but too many of his poems remained adolescent. I know what you're saying/defending, but there is just too much of it that I can't read with a straight face.

Yeah, I hear you, Sam. And I think there's a little Born to Run in that one (which does work for me given the situation). This somehow reminds me a little of our differences regarding Li-young Lee. Anyway, I know Dickey's generally fallen out of favor, but I still love some of his stuff. And in the poems that no longer hold up for me, I usually find something there that's quite nice.

Although it is rather rough, technically, The Heaven of Animals has always struck me as a great poem.

One of my favorites, Rob. Though I could do without S9 and 10, I love this one too.

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/adultery-11/

The first four and a half stanzas are gorgeous. Right on. But I do agree with Sam to an extent, though I might characterize it as more lazy than adolescent. The last stanza is nice here too, imo.

I love the poem, James. But I might have a higher tolerance for adolescent romantic junkyard Americana than most. All I knew of James Dickey was that he wrote 'Deliverance' (which I haven't read) and had a great cameo in the film (which I love) as the smilingly threatening sheriff at the end.

James,
I agree with your edits entirely. Wonderful opening, then at the end – flabby. But the images – as usual are wonderful and intriguing.

I've been looking at the Dickey selection in MacClatchy's Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, and like what I see there: The Hospital Window and of course The Sheep Child – which I still like as an adult. Thanks for reminding me of him.

I think "Falling" is a great poem. I also like "Snakebite," and "To His Children in Darkness." At his best he was very good, but there is a lot to sift through.

David R.

Never read Deliverance and I didn't see the movie. Burt Reynolds in that, too, right? Always thought he was an interesting guy, for whatever reason. Yeah, Dickey's been swept under the rug a bit, so I was itching to mention him. He was big for me when I started to care about poetry, but I do understand the criticism. I felt I outgrew him at a certain point. But I didn't, as much as I thought, and the descriptions of the paintings above his affair are brilliant, so had to post that poem. He sums up poetry, the goodest of the goodest, and the pretty bad. He's helped me both ways.

I just found a quote by Dickey in a review written of Anne Sexton's (even less popular here than Dickey, on this site I'd imagine) All My Pretty Ones, where he writes, "It would be hard to find writer who dwells more insistently on the pathetic and disgusting aspects of bodily experience." Really? Come now Jimmy, as author of "The Sheep Child" let alone "Deliverance," you are a pot calling kettles here. Whatever your opinion of All My Pretty Ones, it does have a ripper of a sonnet in "For a Friend Whose Work has Come to Triumph," which, in my opinion has more craft and wit than anything you ever wrote. (Gauntlet down).

I like Sexton a lot, Rob. What I've read. There's often a fine line, but a big difference, between good and bad. Confessional poetry, whatever that means because it's part of the landscape, now, walks that line. Plath, for example, was a wonderful technician.

James,

I agree completely. It's interesting how both Plath and Sexton disguise their craft, how they slip in the rhymes and meter almost secretively – Sexton with enjambment and slanted rhyme and Plath with irony. I think it's odd how Plath is seen as a tragedy queen, when with her scorching and wry wit she was anything but. Suffering, yes, depressed – undoubtably, but fierce and not at all to be turned into an object of pity.

Yeah, Rob, we are probably a minority here. I wouldn't say that they hid their craft (though I definitely know what you mean), but that their perspectives were different. We hid their craft, I think.

Hey, Rob, I'm afraid I sounded dismissive. I think Plath and, to a lesser degree, Sexton, are vastly underrated. I always give my students Morning Song because of how emotional and precise that poem is.

I like Sexton and Plath too. Plath is superior, imo. Sexton often couldn't resist a sort of staged ending. Wrap up endings and I think they too often make her poems have a cuteness despite the despair she is often presenting. Plath didn't do this.

James,

It seems our comments have shifted this board from Dickey to a Plath/Sexton; which is fine by me. A minority of two is my favorite kind (kidding, of course). And yes, John I agree with you completely about Sexton's endings. I often find myself wanting to lop off the last line or change it ie. the Icarus sonnet "And his daddy went straight off into town." Too cute by far and spoiling an otherwise wonderful poem for me. But then there is that last line in All My Pretty Ones: "bend my strange face down to yours and forgive you." Amazing.

I don't think Plath is often fully appreciated. She, along with Lowell, blew my mind. When I was young, and still now. She's the real deal. Pound, only emotion endures, etc, and that's certainly true in her case. But, as I mentioned before, she's a great technician. In many ways. Happy New Year.

I can't see how Plath could be considered underrated. She's been the subject of more critical and biographical scrutiny than any poet born since 1930. Sexton seems to have faded a bit, like Dickey.

I don't think, Sam, one necessarily has to do with the other. Maybe underappreciated would be a better way to put it.

Here's Morning Song, which I admit I only became aware of 7 or 8 eight years ago, when I was awarded lit classes.

Morning Song

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

In Dickey's correspondence with Sexton, and hers with him, there is an attempt to make their schedules mesh so that they'd be in the same place at the same time. Luckily, this never came off.

I still challenge the assertion that Plath is underappreciated or whatever. Two generations of poets are now under her influence. To claim otherwise is to ignore a lot of literary history. In many ways, I would consider her the most influential poet of the last 50 years.

Plath has certainly been famous but I’m not sure she has been evaluated beyond the proto-feminist confessional label which I don’t think do her justice.

I don't know Sam, a meeting of Sexton and Dickey might have been interesting – even fruitful. Think of Ben Johnson and Shakespeare under the hedge, or Dylan Thomas and Elizabeth Bishop on the tiles after the Library of Congress reading. Poets and poets, always better than poets and painters, or poets and house painters, come to that. I see it as a missed opportunity.

Never mind. I'll try to come back and post something worthwhile, ha.

Ok, yeah, what John said. And I doubt she's been the primary influence for two generations of poets. Must have hurt you somewhat to say though. So that's good. Plath is liked or disliked based on fairly superficial grounds. Which is the very problem of being judged based on gender, race, or whatever. Plath wasn't looking to appeal to a particular demographic, I'm pretty sure. She was writing, at times, about her experience.

Of course in arguing for the technical skill of Plath or Sexton is to ignore the fact that their appeal, for the vast majority of their readers, has nothing to do with skills. That's not to say that they lack them entirely, or that they don't add to the enjoyment of their readers of their poems – whether they are aware of these skills or not. We are not speaking here of John Hollander or Ellen Voigt. Plath's (and Sexton's) appeal, like it or not, is in daring to speak of what was unspoken. And that brings up a point: can the same can be said of Snodgrass or even Lowell? It is not only Sexton and Plath spoke of what cold not be spoken, but that they did it as women. And clearly there was some need for their words. Whether that is still true I cannot say. But I know that I, who have wrestled with my own angels – their treatment of fractured families and mental illness does speak to me strongly. I recently read Sexton's first two books with interest and – yes – with pleasure. That she has "fallen off recently" does not mean a fig to me.

Back in the late '60s/early '70s, I was in the audience at two James Dickey readings. He did "Cherrylog Road" both times, and after the line "In the parking lot of the dead", he looked up at us both times and drawled happily, "Isn't that gooood!"

Everything people love about Dickey, and everything other people hate about him, might be summed up in that bit of performance.

Chris, I think he does have a habit of repeating himself.

At the only reading of his that I attended, he was late in arriving. A poet named Jame Reiss nonethless proceeded with the introduction, and in the course of his introduction he mentioned that he had introduced Dickey before in such flattering terms that Dickey said, "That sounded more like a eulogy than an introduction." At that point, Dickey arrived and went up to the podium. He hadn't heard the introduction, but he pretended that he had been there all along. Going up to the podium, he said "That sounded more like a eulogy than an introduction."

He then proceeded to act like a complete jerk throughout the reading. His novel "Air" had come out, and he spent a long time telling us that it did for the sky what Melville had done for the sea, but the comparison wasn't fair because his book was far better than Moby Dick.

This was my first date with the woman who became and remains my wife, and we bonded over thinking Dickey was a pig and an asshole.

I heard Dickey read only once, rather late in his career. He read "Encounter in the Cage Country" and all of "Bronwen, The Traw, and the Shape-Shifter: A Poem in Four Parts," many copies of which were for sale and were quickly snapped up. There were lots of middle-aged women, mostly on the front rows. It was pretty clear whom he was pitching his wares to. My friend (another writer) and I were so disgusted by the shameless show that we skipped the party afterwards.

I do know that there was a lot more to Dickey than his public pose, and I do admire much of the early work. Still, I've never regretted passing up the chance to meet him.

I didn't wiki this, but didn't Dickey work at an ad agency, at least for a time? Anyway, I think attacking him for being an ass is maybe the wrong approach. Some of his work is right on, though I think I do agree with some criticisms Sam might have.

Roger, James could be a little flamboyant in his introductions. But a really good teacher, some great poems, in my book. Here's link to a favorite of mine:
http://www.versedaily.org/lilyjr.shtml

James, I didn't mean to criticize Reiss at all. In fact, although I've grown less enthusiastic in later years, his book "The Breathers" was one of my favorites in college.

Speaking of college, in college I once was at a gathering that included Philip Levine. The subject of discussion turned at one point to Dickey, and I remember clearly that Levine said something like, "Just because someone's an ass doesn't mean they can't write good poems," and then he mentioned a few poems of Dickey he thought were truly wonderful.

No no, Roger, I didn't think you were being critical. More than anything it made me remember and smile.

*Levine said that? Ha! Great you got to meet him, like that. I know little about Philip Levine and feel a little guilty about it.

The question of basing – or allowing yourself to be biased – by the behavior of an poet is an old question. Indeed there is an industry around tales – most them without foundation – of Shakespeare's life (holding horses for gentlemen attending the theater). I'm sure John Wilmot was a bad risk for a loan and that Rimbaud was tediously self-involved, but oddly I never think of those things when I read their work. And if I ever find myself falling into tall-telling about poets, I have to remind myself, "If you're looking for good behavior with these men and women, brother, you're in the wrong shop."

Yeah, I'm with you, Rob. I try not to let personal differences, or felonies, take away from what's on the page. At the same time, I can't blame those who find it way too much of a distraction. I don't agree with that view, but I understand it.

James (and Sam, if you're there). Dickey did, in fact meet Sexton. They were at – what Diane Middlebook in her biography of A.S. describes as "literary gathering" at Syracuse U in Dec '65. Sexton called up Dickey wanted to talk about his scathing review of "All My Pretty Ones." Predictably he asked he if she "slept around," then sent her some letters which were rather unguarded. She called him and told him to stop, and though Sexton's husband overheard her side of the conversation dismissed it all, because, in his words, "All poets are jerks, anyway."

Another note. Elizabeth Bishop wrote to Lowell to sooth him when comparisons were made from Sexton's first two books and "Life Studies." Apparently Lowell was stung that his protege should be spoken in the same breath with him. Bishop – possibly in an effort to sooth his ego – described Sexton's poems as "our old beautiful silver school female writing." Even accepting that Lowell's ego would require enough air to fill a banquet hall, this is an extraordinary statement. Also it shows that Bishop, famous for refusing to participate in anthologies that were for women only, singles out Sexton as "a female writer."

Well, this is a lot of blather, but your post have gotten me thinking, and rereading Dickey, Sexton, Bishop – even Lowell, and that's all to the good.

Instead of my blather, here's another Dickey poem. It's a mixed bag, imo, but I love many moments, and particularly the first stanza.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe.../the-lifeguard

I can't believe his behavior towards Sexton. What a pig. Thanks much for the behind the scenes look, Rob. Didn't know any of that.

James,

that one is a beauty. Thanks so much. It was unfamiliar, yet even if I had not seen the attribution, I would have known instantly who wrote it. Moon, trees, water – how well me weaves those words, makes them surface just at the right points. An the ambiguity of it. Is the water child living? The length of the poem – its extension though those stanzas make me as a reader wonder if the narrator/lifeguard has kept a vigil though the night. The other day I was thinking that in "The Heaven of Animals" it is also hell – at least for the "bright backs of prey" who "fall, are torn, they rise again." Once more thanks for this.
And yes, it was rather swinish.

Hey Rob, happy to hear you liked that one. The first two stanzas are perfect for me. They hit every note. But I really do think he got caught in a story and it dragged from there. But still loved some moments onward. Probably why I started the thread. He just has too many poignant, unignorable moments to be written off.