SOURCE: Smith, Dave. “James Dickey's Motions.” South Carolina Review 26, no. 2 (spring 1994): 41-60.

In the following essay, Smith views Dickey in the context of a Southern writer.

With the death of Robert Penn Warren, the mantle of preeminent Southern poet seems destined to fall to James Dickey. Wendell Berry, Donald Justice, Eleanor Ross Taylor, and A. R. Ammons are all worthy candidates, but each has deemphasized a Southern identity in ways Dickey has not. Much has been written about James Dickey that is misinformed, silly, or plainly wrong, especially in the latter half of his career. The critical profile ranges from a dismissive, apparently political, condescension to a sycophantic cheering. In A History of Modern Poetry, David Perkins writes tersely of Dickey's “Southern narratives” and implicitly of the facile local color some readers regard as characteristic of Dickey's poetry. Charles Molesworth and Neal Bowers are more expansive but, essentially...