Some of the time, going home, I go
Blind and can’t find it.
The house I lived in growing up and out
The doors of high school is torn
Down and cleared
Away for further development, but that does not stop me.
First in the heart
Of my blind spot are
The Buckhead Boys. If I can find them, even one,
I’m home. And if I can find him catch him in or around
Buckhead, I’ll never die: it’s likely my youth will walk
Inside me like a king.
A nice story on James Dickey in todays NYT : "On the page and off, James Dickey (1923-1997) was a maximalist. His roomy, loquacious poems spill down the page in a waterfall style and in a voice he called “country surrealism.” It makes sense that he called some of these poems “walls of words,” similar to the record producer Phil Spector’s echoing “wall of sound.” Dickey’s music, rougher and weirder than Mr. Spector’s, was similarly packed with reverb.
It’s odd, then, that Dickey is probably best remembered for a spare novel, one from which he stripped most of the poetry, pulling out the finer phrasings like weeds. That novel was his first, “Deliverance” (1970), a book that turns a youthful 40 this year. ( The Rest...) All heartbrokey at the time, Kyle making poor, sweet Mark read him James Dickey poetry after his second bottle of wine. So NOT pretty....
1 comment:
Thanks for posting not only this item on the NYT article, but the poetry as well. "Looking for the Buckhead Boys" is one of the great Dickey poems, although it's buried in the collection "The Whole Motion" as one of "Two Poems of Going Home." The end is almost as good as the beginning, when the poet finds his high school football buddy pumping gas at a Gulf station. Unfortunately the formatting probably won't show the line breaks and spaces, but you get the idea:
... where in God
Almighty have you been all this time? I don't know
Charlie. I don't know. But I've come to tell you a secret
That has to be put into code. Understand what I mean when I say
To the wone man who came back alive
From the Book of the Dead to the braves man
In Buckhead to the lime-eyed ghost
Blue-wavering in the fumes
Of good Gulf gas, "Fill 'er up."
With wine? Light? Heart-attack blood? The contents of Tyree's toilet? The beer
Of teen-age sons? No; just
"Fill 'er up. Fill 'er up, Charlie."
...
Fill 'er up, Kyle. And thanks.
All the best, Chris
For a little more on James Dickey check out his Facebook page, or http://jamesdickey.blogspot.com/
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