10 December 18 James L. Dickey

“Poetry is, I think, the highest medium that mankind has ever come up with. It’s language itself, which is a miraculous medium which makes everything else that man has ever done possible.”  

-- James L. Dickey

This week’s post brings you two poems by James L. Dickey whose reputation as a major American poet seems assured. His dedication to the art of poetry remains unquestioned in the larger picture, above petty criticisms.  

“For the Last Wolverine” has been a special favorite of mine for a very long time, especially the final lines; but don’t cheat and go to those first, as they become meaningful and have their full impact only following the rest of the poem first.

For the Last Wolverine

BY JAMES L. DICKEY

They will soon be down

To one, but he still will be

For a little while    still will be stopping

The flakes in the air with a look,

Surrounding himself with the silence

Of whitening snarls. Let him eat

The last red meal of the condemned

To extinction, tearing the guts

From an elk. Yet that is not enough

For me. I would have him eat

The heart, and from it, have an idea

Stream into his gnarling head

That he no longer has a thing

To lose, and so can walk

Out into the open, in the full

Pale of the sub-Arctic sun

Where a single spruce tree is dying

Higher and higher. Let him climb it

With all his meanness and strength.

Lord, we have come to the end

Of this kind of vision of heaven,

As the sky breaks open

Its fans around him and shimmers

And into its northern gates he rises

Snarling    complete    in the joy of a weasel

With an elk’s horned heart in his stomach

Looking straight into the eternal

Blue, where he hauls his kind. I would have it all

My way: at the top of that tree I place

The New World’s last eagle

Hunched in mangy feathers    giving

Up on the theory of flight.

Dear God of the wildness of poetry, let them mate

To the death in the rotten branches,

Let the tree sway and burst into flame

And mingle them, crackling with feathers,

In crownfire. Let something come

Of it    something gigantic    legendary

Rise beyond reason over hills

Of ice    SCREAMING    that it cannot die,

That it has come back, this time

On wings, and will spare no earthly thing:

That it will hover, made purely of northern

Lights, at dusk and fall

On men building roads: will perch

On the moose’s horn like a falcon

Riding into battle    into holy war against

Screaming railroad crews: will pull

Whole traplines like fibres from the snow

In the long-jawed night of fur trappers.

But, small, filthy, unwinged,

You will soon be crouching

Alone, with maybe some dim racial notion

Of being the last, but none of how much

Your unnoticed going will mean:

How much the timid poem needs

The mindless explosion of your rage,

The glutton’s internal fire    the elk’s

Heart in the belly, sprouting wings,

The pact of the “blind swallowing

Thing,” with himself, to eat

The world, and not to be driven off it

Until it is gone, even if it takes

Forever. I take you as you are

And make of you what I will,

Skunk-bear, carcajou, bloodthirsty

Non-survivor.

                        Lord, let me die    but not die

Out.

From The Whole Motion: Collected Poems 1945-1992, Wesleyan University Press, 1998.

Background:

James Dickey died in 1997, and since then, his reputation as a major 20th century poet has only grown. His verse experimented with themes/images of violence as well as diversity of voices in his poems, such as the wolverine who speaks to us in the poem above. He was also drawn to expressions and contrasts between the human species and the non-human natural world. He strongly believed that continuing contact with the “primitive” world nurtured humanity’s self-knowledge. Due to this belief, Dickey frequently wrote from the perspective of non-human creatures, such as the wolverine above. Perhaps as a result, some critics thought of him as a “primitive savage.”

Dickey flew 100 combat missions during World War II, and it was during this time that he began to dabble with verse. A stint in academia followed but that environment found Dickey’s poems offensive (obscene), and so he left to work in advertising to make the big bucks. Only in 1960 did he publish his first book of poems. This was moderately late in his life in that he was born in 1923.

Dickey was passionate about poetry and once said, “I had begun to suspect, however, that there is a poet—or a kind of poet—buried in every human being.”

Many may remember Dickey’s novel, Deliverance, published in 1970 and fairly soon afterward was made into a major movie. Again, the story dealt with humanity within the primal, natural life, by placing four “civilized” men on a canoe trip in dangerous situations amid the savagery of nature where human concepts and laws are meaningless. The story is based on Dickey’s own experiences.

Exploration #1: When you have finished reading “For the Last Wolverine,” are you able to make comparative connections between the Wolverine and a human being or the human race?

Exploration #2: Do you agree with Dickey that contact with the “primitive,” natural world is essential for the human species?

Exploration #3: Do you think that “there is a poet buried in every human being?”

For those who were intrigued by the wolverine, here is another Dickey poem coming from the natural world.

The Heaven of Animals

BY JAMES L. DICKEY

Here they are. The soft eyes open.   

If they have lived in a wood

It is a wood.

If they have lived on plains

It is grass rolling

Under their feet forever.

Having no souls, they have come,   

Anyway, beyond their knowing.   

Their instincts wholly bloom   

And they rise.

The soft eyes open.

To match them, the landscape flowers,   

Outdoing, desperately

Outdoing what is required:

The richest wood,

The deepest field.

For some of these,

It could not be the place

It is, without blood.

These hunt, as they have done,

But with claws and teeth grown perfect,

More deadly than they can believe.   

They stalk more silently,

And crouch on the limbs of trees,   

And their descent

Upon the bright backs of their prey

May take years

In a sovereign floating of joy.   

And those that are hunted   

Know this as their life,

Their reward: to walk

Under such trees in full knowledge   

Of what is in glory above them,   

And to feel no fear,

But acceptance, compliance.   

Fulfilling themselves without pain

At the cycle’s center,

They tremble, they walk   

Under the tree,

They fall, they are torn,   

They rise, they walk again.

From The Whole Motion: Collected Poems, 1945-1992, Wesleyan University Press, 1998.

From Beltrami Island Forest – Jack Pine Savage