Customer Reviews (1)

Dickey was an American Poet.
James Dickey (1923-1997) was an American poet and the author of the novel _Deliverance_ (1970), which was made into a popular movie starring Burt Reynolds. _Helmets_ was published in 1964. It is divided into four parts, containinga total of 24 poems.

From a 1964 review by X. J. Kennedy:
"...James Dickey is a poet in search of an absolute. Catching a glimpse of some fleeting reality, Dickey would wrap words around it hurriedly before it gets away. This attitude, which pays small attention to the words themselves and practically none to le mot juste, makes Dickey's work seem deficient in a quality Roethke fought for: verbal surprise. Though working from such different assumptions, Dickey often manages to make his work memorable by the sheer force of what he has to say. For his specialty is curious psychological adventure, as in the moving "Approaching Prayer," in which he identifies with a hunted boar while donning the animal's trophy head.

"In a completely successful and very funny poem about an assignation in an automobile junkyard, "Cherrylog Road," Dickey seems to have discovered how to view himself with a new, detached humor. "Helmets," his third full collection in five years, is his best yet. It is rich in the relentless intelligence that has made him, incidentally, the finest of our new critics of poetry...."
... Read more