Unfortunately, none of the poems (or translations "from the UnEnglish") in The Strength of Fields measures up to "The Performance," "The Sheep-Child" or "Falling." In recent years Dickey has forsaken traditional meter for a broken line using a "gap technique," somewhat reminiscent of late William Carlos Williams. At times he has employed it with splendid effect—especially in "Butterflies" where his typographical fragments were able to mirror the flitting of butterflies—but here it is overly ragged and abrupt. Read aloud, or even better, declaimed by Dickey himself, these story poems can generate great power….

Still another novelty in the later work is Dickey's increased regard for noun-compounds ("root-light," "moth-force," "death-mud," "stomach-pool"), which at best seem unnecessary and at worst unclear. Such broken lines and neologisms, embedded in an extremely convoluted syntax, recall the kennings and interlace patterns of Old English poetry. Indeed, Dickey almost invites the comparison...