{"id":10105,"date":"2025-02-02T08:00:49","date_gmt":"2025-02-02T13:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=10105"},"modified":"2026-02-01T14:22:01","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T19:22:01","slug":"the-books-the-norton-anthology-of-modern-and-contemporary-poetry-james-dickey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=10105","title":{"rendered":"“I want a fever, in poetry: a fever, and tranquillity.” — James Dickey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n“a fever and tranquility” – an intriguing combination.<\/p>\n

James Dickey is probably most well-known for his novel Deliverance<\/a>\"\"<\/i> – but even there, it was really the film<\/em> of said book that made him a household name. Dickey wrote the screenplay for the 1972 film as well, and was nominated for a Golden Globe as well as a Writer’s Guild Award. He even played a small part in the film. The whole thing made him very very famous. Deliverance<\/i> has seeped into the American consciousness. Or maybe it’s just the images from the film that are in our consciousness.<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\nSpeaking of “images in our consciousness”, the cover design for the first edition is genius. <\/p>\n

Dickey tapped into a wellspring of horror and anxiety – specifically male<\/em> horror and anxiety – about the vulnerability of the male body, its penetratibility, the fact that it can be destroyed, that men who cannot imagine what it must feel like to be a woman are put into the woman’s position, a position of helplessness against a much-stronger threat – these are realities that men, in general you understand, manage to ignore. And so when they are threatened like women are regularly threatened, they are completely unprepared. Dickey drew back the veil on all of that. <\/p>\n

Although the novel (and film) made him immortal, Dickey was primarily a poet, and a major one. <\/p>\n

Born in a suburb of Atlanta, he went to college a bit, but when WWII broke out, he enlisted in the army air corps. Dickey told some tall tales about the combat he saw in WWII, most of it apparently untrue, or at least widely exaggerated – and when he came back to America he enrolled at Vanderbilt University, a hot-bed of Southern poetry at the time, a major center of operations – which really rocked the boat, at a time when most poets congregated in New York City. Vanderbilt had an amazing poetry program, with illustrious faculty drawn there to teach, and many major names emerged. This was Dickey’s full immersion into the vibrant Southern poetry scene. He got his Masters from Vanderbilt, and then taught poetry at various universities throughout the south, Florida, South Carolina, etc. He trained radio operators during the Korean War. He wrote Deliverance<\/i> in 1970. It was his first novel.<\/p>\n

Dickey said in 1970:<\/p>\n

As Longinus points out, there’s a razor’s edge between sublimity and absurdity. And that’s the edge I try to walk. Sometimes both<\/i> sides are ludicrous! … But I don’t think you can get to sublimity without courting the ridiculous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sublimity. Ridiculous. Fever. Tranquility. Dickey was drawn to extreme oppositions. <\/p>\n

James Dickey’s poems feel immediate and urgent. Yet there isn’t a slapdash tossed-off word in them. He was not afraid to look at a thing without blinking, to get to the heart of whatever experience being expressed. The poem I’m sharing today – “Hospital Window” – describes a very specific experience of going to see your ill father in the hospital, and then seeing him through the window as you leave. I experienced this almost identically, my father’s hand in the air waving as we walked to our cars. I was at that hospital just last week (I have a concussion. Long story.) … and we’ve had a lot of visits there over the last year because reasons … and every time I approach the main door, I look up and see where my father waved to us long ago. And I feel the pang of pain, the terrible pain\/fear of those years when my dad was sick. Dickey’s poem rattles me. I have never been able to bear writing about my father and his illness. I can’t and won’t. It doesn’t exist anywhere except in my memory. I am grateful to those who can and do express these things, like Dickey. <\/p>\n

In writing so truthfully about a moment in his life, he gives voice to what I went through and felt. <\/p>\n

Dickey’s is an important regional voice.<\/p>\n

The Hospital Window<\/big><\/b><\/p>\n

I have just come down from my father.
\nHigher and higher he lies
\nAbove me in a blue light
\nShed by a tinted window.
\nI drop through six white floors
\nAnd then step out onto pavement.<\/p>\n

Still feeling my father ascend,
\nI start to cross the firm street,
\nMy shoulder blades shining with all
\nThe glass the huge building can raise.
\nNow I must turn round and face it,
\nAnd know his one pane from the others.<\/p>\n

Each window possesses the sun
\nAs though it burned there on a wick.
\nI wave, like a man catching fire.
\nAll the deep-dyed windowpanes flash,
\nAnd, behind them, all the white rooms
\nThey turn to the color of Heaven.<\/p>\n

Ceremoniously, gravely, and weakly,
\nDozens of pale hands are waving
\nBack, from inside their flames.
\nYet one pure pane among these
\nIs the bright, erased blankness of nothing.
\nI know that my father is there,<\/p>\n

In the shape of his death still living.
\nThe traffic increases around me
\nLike a madness called down on my head.
\nThe horns blast at me like shotguns,
\nAnd drivers lean out, driven crazy\u00e2\u0080\u0094
\nBut now my propped-up father<\/p>\n

Lifts his arm out of stillness at last.
\nThe light from the window strikes me
\nAnd I turn as blue as a soul,
\nAs the moment when I was born.
\nI am not afraid for my father\u00e2\u0080\u0094
\nLook! He is grinning; he is not<\/p>\n

Afraid for my life, either,
\nAs the wild engines stand at my knees
\nShredding their gears and roaring,
\nAnd I hold each car in its place
\nFor miles, inciting its horn
\nTo blow down the walls of the world<\/p>\n

That the dying may float without fear
\nIn the bold blue gaze of my father.
\nSlowly I move to the sidewalk
\nWith my pin-tingling hand half dead
\nAt the end of my bloodless arm.
\nI carry it off in amazement,<\/p>\n

High, still higher, still waving,
\nMy recognized face fully mortal,
\nYet not; not at all, in the pale,
\nDrained, otherworldly, stricken,
\nCreated hue of stained glass.
\nI have just come down from my father.<\/p>\n

\n 
\n 
\nThank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account<\/a>. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0<\/a>, if you’d like to subscribe.<\/em> <\/small><\/p>\n