Thankyou Saffron. That is one very profound poem. I find some of the imagery puzzling and yet I feel, it might be like a joke, in that, if you don't 'get it' on first careful reading, it might lose its magic in needing to be studied or explained. Is that the case?

We know that the sun is away we know that the sun can be conquered
By moths, in blue home-town air.

It is very beautiful - but I'm not sure I am understanding....

Ok Penny, I will have a stab at this poem. With really going back over the poem for a second read, her are my general impressions. Some of the words are repeated several times in the poem or used as descriptors in unconventional ways. Those words are moth, field, strength, and men. I will go word by word and see what picture emerges. A moth is something ephemeral, mysterious, single focused on light to the point of destruction. A field or the fields I think of all that gives us sustenance. The land is what we come from and go back to. Strength is what is needed to survive and men is humanity or the human condition. The feeling or impression I got reading this poem is the moth represents the mystery of human society and fragility of the social contracts that hold it together. I'd venture a guess that the poet is also make a commentary on society in comparing society to a moth's unaccountable attraction to light at any cost and yet this attraction is something nature built into the moth.

Alright now I will try to apply this to specific lines in the poem.

Maybe the title is - The strength of nature or the strength of the earth as a whole

The Strength of Fields

... a separation from the world,
a penetration to some source of power
and a life-enhancing return ...
Van Gennep: Rites de Passage

I am not familiar with this quote and have not as of yet looked it up (hard for me to resist). I think it is saying that understanding our connection/place/dependence on the earth/nature is a source of power.



What field-forms can be,
Outlying the small civic light-decisions over
A man walking near home?
Men are not where he is
Exactly now, but they are around him around him like the strength We are individuals and separate beings, but we are who we are because we are part of a group and the group is protective and a source of strength (two heads are better than one?)

Of fields. The solar system floats on
Above him in town-moths. I think the poet is saying that most of us don't really know why we do what we do, just like moths beating there wings toward the light.

Tell me, train-sound,
With all your long-lost grief,
what I can give.
Dear Lord of all the fields
what am I going to do?
Street-lights, blue-force and frail
As the homes of men, tell me how to do it how
To withdraw how to penetrate and find the source
Of the power you always had
light as a moth, and rising
With the level and moonlit expansion
Of the fields around, and the sleep of hoping men. I think this is a long way to say, "God, help me know what light I am supposed to see and strive toward."

You? I? What difference is there? We can all be saved

...ok, got to go for now. Anyone else want to take a stab at this or to finish where I left off?

That's an ambitious poem as well as a try at covering it. It is like a deeply felt prayer, especially in the way it concludes, with an almost religious sentiment. But it's mysterious to me in general. Dickey's earlier work didn't take such a stretch to understand. By the time of the volume named after this poem, Dickey had started to experiment, abandoning forms and linearity and standard diction. Would you be interested in seeing some of the earlier poems? I was very fond of several of them.

Of course we all know Dickey as the Deliverance guy, too. He gave rednecks a bit of literary cachet in both poetry and prose.

DWill wrote:That's an ambitious poem as well as a try at covering it. It is like a deeply felt prayer, especially in the way it concludes, with an almost religious sentiment. But it's mysterious to me in general. Dickey's earlier work didn't take such a stretch to understand. By the time of the volume named after this poem, Dickey had started to experiment, abandoning forms and linearity and standard diction. Would you be interested in seeing some of the earlier poems? I was very fond of several of them.

Of course I would be interested in having a look at a few earlier works by Mr. Dickey. Post away, DWill!

Deliverance is a fine literary novel. There's a scene where the main character has to climb a cliff wall that leaves the reader breathless. I didn't know Dickey's other claim to fame was as a poet.

I have another of his novels on my shelf that I'm looking forward to, To The White Sea.

geo wrote:Deliverance is a fine literary novel. There's a scene where the main character has to climb a cliff wall that leaves the reader breathless. I didn't know Dickey's other claim to fame was as a poet.

I have another of his novels on my shelf that I'm looking forward to, To The White Sea.

I recall seeing a great interview of Dickey by Bill Moyers, and wonder if it might be out there somewhere. An interesting note, Christopher Dickey is the writer's son. He was a foreign correspondent for either Time or Newsweek. He also wrote a memoir about his father that I partially read but put it down for some reason. It was an eye-opening look at JD, a man of rather gargantuan appetites.

Here's one of Dickey's poems that I especially remember.


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.

James Dickey, “The Heaven of Animals” from The Whole Motion: Collected Poems 1945-1992. Copyright © 1992 by James Dickey. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press, http://www.wesleyan.edu/wespress.

Source: James Dickey: The Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1998)

Quick note on C. Dickey--looks to be formidable in his own write (ha ha). http://www.christopherdickey.com/books_menu1.html

Thanks, DWill. Still thinking this over. The theme seems to be finding a balance with one's environment or something like that.

geo wrote:Thanks, DWill. Still thinking this over. The theme seems to be finding a balance with one's environment or something like that.

Interesting Geo, I got a circle of life feel from the poem or an "all god's creatures got a place in the choir" thing. How about you DWill, since you posted the poem, give us your take.

Saffron wrote:

geo wrote:Thanks, DWill. Still thinking this over. The theme seems to be finding a balance with one's environment or something like that.

Interesting Geo, I got a circle of life feel from the poem or an "all god's creatures got a place in the choir" thing. How about you DWill, since you posted the poem, give us your take.

Without knowing much about Dickey's beliefs, I think this poem is probing the religious idea of grace in a natural world governed by tooth and claw. One of the definitions of grace is: 1) the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings. and 2) a divinely given talent or blessing. Just as Blake ponders the existence of tigers in a world made byGod—Did He who made the lamb make thee?—Dickey is exploring the idea of beauty and wonder in the natural world where all life forms thrive in harmony with nature (within their environmental niche). By imagining an animal heaven, Dickey can explore the state of grace that exists on earth. So even soulless beasts exist in heaven and what made them function so well in their environmental niche in real life exist in a more perfect state in heaven. Predators have sharper claws and more stealth. And even the flowers and trees "desperately outdoing what is required." And even the animals that are destined to be another animal's meal are blessed with an awareness that "this as their life, Their reward: to walk Under such trees in full knowledge , Of what is in glory above them."

Or something like that.

I can imagine that my (deaf) white cat exists in a state of grace when he lies down on our white comforter, blissfully unaware that he is perfectly harmonious with his surroundings.

Nicely done, Geo. I have been thinking about my overly simplistic post about the poem while at work today. I was definitely thinking along the same lines as the line from Blake. The word justice was floating around in my head and balance, as in the balance that all things seek.