SOURCE: Rich, Susanna. “Dickey's ‘The Firebombing’.” Explicator 54, no. 2 (winter 1996): 110-13.

In the following essay, Rich construes Dickey's poem “The Firebombing” as implicating the reader in its speaker's guilt.

Jacques-Louis David originally displayed his painting The Sabines facing a cartouched oval mirror. When patrons turned their backs to the painting to look into the mirror, they saw themselves flattened two-dimensionally into the midst of the battle of the Sabines against the Romans—either imprinted over the central figure of the woman with arms outstretched as if on a crucifix, or standing under her arms, as if under protective wings. With a slight shift, the viewer became imprinted over the figure of the naked invading Roman who has his back to us, a round shield covering him. David's unusual orchestration made a political statement at the time of the French Revolution: We are all involved and implicated in the struggle...