First of all this is a great book. Iam buying it for my grandso
in his new house for a coffee table book. The price was good and the condition of the book was excellent. You can't beat the packing and shipping time.

WAYFARER by James Dickey and William A. Bake. A haunting story from the mountains of the South and 178 glorious full-color photos by "The Faulkner of Photography."

I became familiar with James Dickey while pursuing my BFA in writing, and I keep finding myself coming back to his poetry. All of the "famous" ones are here, as well as a few lesser-known gems--such as "Pursuit From Under"--that cannot be lived without,especially if you love great poetry. Dickey was persecuted after "The Fire Bombing" because it showed the bombing of Japan in WWII as beautiful, but it is easy, when reading the poem, to forgive this and understand that Dickey was one of the great masters of poetry. I rank him among the best and most gifted. It's amazing that a man who was once an executive for big buisiness turned out some of the most important poetry ever written. Sensitive and enlightening, this is a collection I would recomment to anyone. Peace not war.

i have been a fan of james dickey's work since college. now that i am teaching a college class in world poetry, i just couldn't resist choosing dickey. the problem was, which book to teach. i decided to use the whole motion because it spans dickey's career, including every important poem of this great, underated american poet. poetry lovers will recognize some of his more anthologized works (the lifeguard, the firebombing, cherrylog road) and will be thrilled to find other penetrating works of art regarding nature, war, guilt, love, family, and so on. i personally recommend the poem drinking from a helmet, one of the greatest american poems i've ever read. if you love dickey's novel deliverance (one of the greatest american novels ever written) as much as i do, then you will certainly love this body of poety, a must for people who are interested in poetry about the power of nature, as well as the intracacies of human nature.

This is a great book for begining flyfishers, with special attention to fly-casting, fly patterns, and trout (Brook, Brown, & Rainbow). Charley Dickey is an outstanding writer who not only informs, but amuses his readers...

Intelligently written and theoretically sophisticated, Clabough's book links Dickey's novels together in a new and unusual way, while also discussing large amounts of Dickey's unpublished fiction. Perhaps most notable, is his/her outstanding chapter on the currently out-of-print "Alnilam," which illustrates the complexities of that massive work: Dickey's attempted masterpiece. This book makes me want to reread all of Dickey's novels, which is perhaps the most telling sign of its value and success.

I love poets from the American South. There is a sensuality and feeling-first ethic that make them distinctive.

The book opens with the sad and lovely "Diabetes," which describes its initial and eventual symptoms: "I thirsted like a prince...my belly going round and round with self-/ Made night-water..gangrene and kidney/ Failure...boils blindness skin trouble falling/ Teeth coma and death."

Knowing a diabetic personally makes this melancholic meditation highly poignant for me: "One pocket nailed with needles and injections, the other dragging/ With sugar cubes to balance me in life...Tell me, black riders, does this do any good?"

The poem's diabetic is courting death, "a livable death at last": "Heavy summer is right/ For a long drink of beer (a diabetic no- no)...my body is turning, is flashing unbalanced/ Sweetness everywhere, and I am calling my birds."

"Messages" contrasts the childhood and adolescence of the poet's son. In childhood, father and son chase "Butterflies"; all is playful frivolity. In the gorgeous "Giving a Son to the Sea," Section II of this poem, Dickey realizes he will lose his son to other loves and other lands: "And I must let you go, out of your gentle/ Childhood into your own man suspended..." It oozes fatherly affection as the poet addresses his "gentle blonde/ Son."

"Apollo" honors American astronauts but sees Dickey going a bit over the top verbally, something he is perpetual danger of doing. On the other hand, his abstract mysterious work in "The Place" is stunning: On a frigid winter night, a pair of lovers look for a place private enough to share a secret.

"The Cancer Match" brings bracing optimism to a troubling diagnosis, and "Venom" brings the same message to a snakebite sufferer. This pair of poems are like a Southern faith-healing; they ask sheer belief and willfulness to conquer death: "Turn the poison/ Round turn it back on itself O turn it/ Good: better than life they whisper:/ Turn it, they hammer whitely:/ Turn it, turn it,/ Brother."

"Blood" is about the murder of a woman, and the reader can't be sure if the poet is the killer or someone who stumbled upon the scene. I recommend it for its beautiful violence and its mystery. "In the Pocket" is a witty ode to a football quarterback; it's great to see Dickey take on unlikely poetic topics. It contains the great lines "My friends are crumbling/ Around me the wrong color is looming," as the QB scrambles for safety.

"Madness" is a masterpiece about a beloved family dog dying because it coupled with a rabid she-wolf. A chilling study of a canine femme fatale which has a subtext about human adultery, the poem suggests a conflict between the longing for freedom and domesticity. This is a sensual tour-de-force, perhaps the volume's best poem. The rabid she-wolf is "slopping soap." "She burned alive/ In her smell." She taunts the dog, claiming, "I'm what you come/ Out here in the bushes for." The beloved pet, the "spirit of the household" is welcomed back soon after his coupling, his fatal bite confused for damage from barbed wire. When he develops the wolf's disease, however, and bites the family's youngest child, he must be put to death.

"The Eye-Beaters" is a long complex and challenging poem about dealing with trauma. The poet visits a home for children, many of whom have gone blind and are strikng their eyes with their fists. This is too much to take, and the poet invents a fiction to deal with this horror. It's an argument for romanticizing, something the poet does in this whole emotion-charged, sensual collection. "The Eye-Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead, and Mercy" captures the tumult of late-60s America. Dickey writes abstract associative free verse, but make every word count in a way even the Beat poets rarely do. This is a poetic masterwork, very masculine, very Southern, from the author of "Deliverance." Get it and soak in its honesty and vitality.

It is a very descriptive and profound source of information especially for a middle school student.

A very good book of poems. Lovely stuff about Turkey.

This is an amazing volume of poetry. It is very modern and refreshing. No cobwebs here!

Jim Tunney, former NFL official, presents his tale of his officiating career. Along the way, he shares stories which not only give the layman an insight to the hidden side of the NFL, but also demonstrates how to be the ultimate professional. Tunney displays uncanny understanding of human behavior and relates the key elements in dealing with people both on and off the field. A must-read for all sports officials. A joy to read again and again.

First off, as in all my reviews of Dickey's work, or work on Dickey's work: a disclaimer. I knew Dickey from 1991 until his death, and thus my opinion of him must be biased in some way, though I'm not sure in which direction, if any. I simply consider him now, after his death, as I did before our meeting in 1991 and our many phone conversations following our meeting, as the last great poet in America. Hart has done a good job of editing and my hat, if I had one on at the moment, would be off to him.-I don't want to belabor the point. Either you get great poetry or you don't. Hart's selection of the best of Dickey's poetry is exquisite. In particular, "The Sheep Child" a poem written from the perspective of the few seconds of life of a product of bestiality is what Dickey is all about:

"...In the summer sun of the hillside, with my eyes Far more than human. I saw for a blazing moment The great grassy world from both sides, Man and beast in the round of their need,

And the hill wind stirred in my wool, My hoof and my hand clasped each other, I ate my one meal Of milk, and died Staring. From dark grass I came straight....."

This is Dickey at his best, in perfect tune with the wondrous and terrible insights combined with the visionary traumas of what we call "Nature," but which we are tremblingly unsure about, just like the sheep child in his (her?) moment of existence.

A must for lovers of true poetry.-A rarity in these days.