In this Book
- Buckdancer’s Choice: Poems
- Book
- 2012
- Published by: Wesleyan University Press
- Series: Wesleyan Poetry Program
Winner of the National Book Award (1966)
Winner of the Melville Cane Award (1966)
Whoever looks to a new book by James Dickeys for further work in an established mode, or for mere novelty, is going to be disappointed. But those who seek instead a true widening of the horizons of meaning, coupled with a sure-handed mastery of the craft of poetry, will find this latest collection satisfying indeed.
Here is a man who matches superb gifts with a truly subtle imagination, into whose depths he is courageously traveling—pioneering—in exploratory penetrations into areas of life that are too often evaded or denied. "The Firebombing," "Slave Quarters," "The Fiend"—these poems, with the others that comprise the present volume, show a mature and original poet at his finest.
Table of Contents
- The Firebombing
- pp. 11-20
- Part 2
- Buckdancer's Choice
- pp. 21-22
- Faces Seen Once
- pp. 23-25
- The Common Grave
- pp. 26-28
- Reincarnation
- pp. 29-30
- Them, Crying
- pp. 31-33
- The Celebration
- pp. 34-35
- The Escape
- pp. 36-38
- The Shark's Parlor
- pp. 39-42
- Part 3
- Pursuit from Under
- pp. 43-45
- Fathers and Sons
- pp. 48-51
- Sled Burial, Dream Ceremony
- pp. 52-53
- The Night Pool
- pp. 56-57
- The War Wound
- pp. 58-59
- Part 4
- Slave Quarters
- pp. 73-79