SOURCE: Mills, Ralph J., Jr. Review of Poems 1957-1967, by James Dickey. TriQuarterly, no. 11 (winter 1968): 231-42.

In the following review, Mills explores Dickey's almost mystical poetic process and his characteristic themes—including the spiritual interpenetration of the living and the dead—but criticizes his lack of imagination in works like “The Firebombing,” and observes a diminishing intensity in his later poems.

As various poets and critics have been remarking over the past few years, both the mood and the means of much of the important new American poetry has been noticeably changing. While it is difficult in the midst of such movement to predict with anything like accuracy the final course of contemporary poetry's drift and flow, there are certain characteristics which have become rather evident. In a recent essay, “Dead Horses and Live Issues,” (The Nation, April 24, 1967), the poet Louis Simpson discusses some of them and also...